


Imposter's Insignia

by calderaNightOwl



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Accidental Relationship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Bones is such a caretaker, Domestic Fluff, Fake Cadet! Jim, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Genius James T. Kirk, Identity Porn, Jim bullshits his way into the Academy, Lies, M/M, Misunderstandings, Sharing a Bed, Starfleet Bureaucracy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25101808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calderaNightOwl/pseuds/calderaNightOwl
Summary: “Hey, if we got married, we could put in a request for family housing – get a whole apartment with a kitchen and a living room.” Jim laughed, swallowing back the memories of the sixth months following Tarsus that he’d lived on base in just such an apartment.Jim meant it as a joke, but when he didn’t hear Bones laughing, he looked up and caught Bones staring at him seriously, considering.“What, no, seriously?” Jim squawked.ORThe one in which Jim and Bones get married the day they meet in order to skirt Starfleet housing regulations. There’s one problem with the plan: Jim isn’t actually enlisted, and no one knows – not even Bones.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 88
Kudos: 378





	1. Chapter 1

There was no recruitment speech. No father figure plucking Jim Kirk out of obscurity by simply daring him to be better. When the wave of Starfleet personnel passed through the bar that night, Jim hated them for the same reason he wanted to be them: they got to leave. Take off from this shitty town and never look back.

There was music thumping, and the floor was sticky as he leaned over the bar into the personal space of one of the better-looking cadets. His smile was returned by a pointed look down the nose. No recognition passed through her eyes when he introduced himself – there never was.

Only the locals in Riverside remembered that his father was a Starfleet legend. And even then, they only bothered to mention it when making a point of just how he’d never live up to his Dad’s legacy. Strangers never seemed to be able to reconcile the delinquent Jim Kirk persona with the glory of a national hero in order to make the connection.

Jim was trashed, he knew he was, but it didn’t stop him from flirting. Anything to get his mind off of his life. The way that he’d wake up tomorrow and see the same scenery that he’d be stuck with forever if he couldn’t find a way out.

Uhura all but called him a farm animal, and he bit down a wash of familiar cold fury. A backwater hick, that’s all they’d ever see in him and it made him want to scream with rage. So, when another Starfleet cadet came over obviously itching to start something, Jim didn’t back down.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
That night, Jim didn’t sleep much. When he was that drunk, he always had weird dreams in a half-sleep that he woke too easily from. It was one of the more immediate downsides of drinking to forget that he wasn’t like them, that he’d never be like them. Plus, his face hurt like a motherfucker.

Usually he got by on nights like these by staying up, eyes glazed over, as he skimmed old tractor maintenance manuals that he dug out of storage from the attic one summer. The feel of the real paper under his fingers was soothing. And if he passed out with schematics in his mind, his dreams tended towards engine repair more often than not.

Tonight though, he was indignant. Not in the mood for even trying to be less in a mood, he paced across the chipped linoleum in the kitchen. But the movement just made him dizzy and slightly nauseous.

He didn’t even have the chance to prove that he was better than they thought he was – that he might even be better than them. Jim tried to enlist once, years ago. Walked into a recruiter’s office and jumped though their hoops for the chance to sign on the dotted line. A dark chuckle escaped him, as he thought about the rejection that landed in his inbox a week later. A deceptively neutral subject line, ‘Regarding the application of James T. Kirk’, for a single page document proudly emblazoned with the Starfleet logo at the top, which spouted advanced verbiage about how his ‘personality profile wasn’t consistent’ with top performers in Starfleet. 

Apparently, they had gotten a look at his juvie arrest record and cut him loose before he even started. He could have given them a different name. A name that wasn’t so bogged down by a collated list of loitering, trespassing, speeding, destruction of property, and on and on. But after that first rejection something in him had soured and the idea of pretending to be a perfect little recruit turned his stomach.

It was a load of bullshit, the gatekeepers pushing you out if you didn’t have all the boxes ticked on their mandated forms. He just needed to show them. Warp mechanics probably wasn’t that hard. Jim already knew xeno-linguistics would be a piece of cake. The fantasy was all too easy to imagine. Strutting into one of the Starfleet Academy classes, plopping down in an open seat, breezing through a final on interstellar negotiation tactics and ethics. Just to see the look on their faces when they realized they had turned him down.

Jim stopped short in his pacing. His hands wavered in the air, just short of reaching out to grasp something, but there was nothing there. As much as he hated the figurative gatekeepers to Starfleet’s bureaucracy, it wasn’t like they had literal armed guards waiting at the entrance to every classroom. There was nothing stopping him from just showing up at the Academy to blow them out of the water.

It was a terrible idea, but once the thought came, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He had to at least try it. Worst comes to worse, he’d get tossed out on his ass and he could pick up the same shitty jobs that he would have ended up doing in Riverside.

It took Jim ten minutes to pack a bag, but an additional three hours doing little things around the old farmhouse to prepare it for a long period of sitting uninhabited. His mom was up in the black somewhere, Sam was who knew where, and dear old Uncle Frank had been dead for years. So, no one would be back for a good long while.

Dump everything from the fridge, lock up the barn, take out the trash, throw some old sheets on all the furniture. By the time he was finished, the sky was just beginning to lighten again through the windows. Jim caught a glance of himself in the mirror at the end of the hall. There was a huge bruise already purpling on the right side of his face. He shook his head at himself, there wasn’t much he could do for it now. He had to leave soon to make the walk into town to catch the transport if he didn’t want to have to ditch his bike at the terminal.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
Jim realized his mistake when he reached the landing strip. He had been planning to take a civilian transport shuttle out to San Francisco. But there was only one craft in sight, clearly marked as Starfleet. In the back of his mind, he knew it already, that the civilian transport out to San Francisco was next week. Just like he knew that he wanted them to turn him away. Tell him he couldn’t get on the shuttle, so that he’d have an excuse to turn around and go back to cowering in his old family home.

He took a step forward, and then another. Turned it into a confident stride as he approached. There was a guy with a PADD standing next to the open landing doors. It seemed like he was overseeing the boxes being dumped in the cargo hold more than he was watching the groups of Starfleet cadets and officers straggling in.

As Jim walked up, the guy’s eyes flicked up from his PADD and looked Jim up and down. Jim held his breath. This was it – the moment they turned him away – again. Then the guy just said,

“New recruit?”

And Jim said, “Yeah,” voice cracking a little, he covered it with a cough, nodding.

“Off you go then.” The guy said, already turning back to another set of boxes.

Jim was up the ramp before he could rethink it. A handful of open seats reassured him that he wasn’t literally taking someone’s spot. He slung his bag down under one of them, sitting down, only to look up and find Uhura from last night glaring at him.

It was on instinct that Jim smirked back at her. He was still too keyed up. Any second now the guy with the list was gonna look back at him and demand ID. All through buckling in and the mandatory safety check, Jim couldn’t get his heartrate to go down. It was really happening. He was leaving.

There was a commotion at the back of the craft near the bathrooms. Someone was trying to corral a man who looked surprisingly like he might be having as bad of a week as Jim into one of the open seats.

“I might throw up on you.” Was what the man said when he plopped down into the seat next to Jim.

It startled Jim into a laugh, and for the first time since Jim had this terrible idea, he relaxed.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
Jim fell into step with Bones as they left the shuttle. The man seemed reluctant to split up. Jim might’ve just been projecting.

Bones probably didn’t need Jim to come with him to Administration Building B for enlistment procedures. But Bones was also under the understandable and mistaken impression that Jim was a fellow recruit.

Jim should’ve corrected him, but he didn’t. Jim should’ve really been making an excuse to leave before they got to the Admin building and whoever was manning the desk there realized he wasn’t actually a recruit. But every time Jim glanced over and opened his mouth, ready to let whatever excuse lived under his tongue fall out, he just ended up closing his mouth and keeping pace.

The mutual companionship they’d carried over from the shuttle ride was their last line of defense before either of them committed to the life-changing decision known as Starfleet. A decision that could turn out to be a colossal mistake.

“This was a mistake.” Bones grumbled, echoing Jim’s thoughts almost exactly. “Why the fuck did I think Starfleet would be a good idea? I hate space!”

Bones’ constant refrain was familiar even after only a couple of hours of knowing the guy. Jim’d managed to divert their topic of conversation away from Starfleet, space, and their imminent future multiple times while aboard the shuttle. But, now that they were here, walking across Academy grounds, reality was staring them in the face. Jim’s reflexive consolation was practically habit, even if he didn’t totally feel the words.

“It’ll be fine, Bones. Come on, you probably won’t see space until you get out of the Academy. Even then you can request a dirt-side position.” Jim clapped him on the shoulder. Starfleet would bend over backwards to accommodate him, doctors were just that valuable. Unlike Jim.

“Oh God, the Academy. I forgot about the dorms.” Bones groaned and ran a hand through his hair, “I really can’t do this. There’s no goddamn way I am rooming with a literal teenager for four years. They’re imbeciles – you know that? Wouldn’t be able to tie their own shoes without help.”

Jim didn’t bother to point out that said teenager would at some point age into their twenties. He got it, it was the principle of the matter.

“Hey, if we got married, we could put in a request for family housing – get a whole apartment with a kitchen and a living room.” Jim laughed, swallowing back the memories of the sixth months following Tarsus that he’d lived on base in just such an apartment.

Jim meant it as a joke, but when he didn’t hear Bones laughing, he looked up and caught Bones staring at him seriously, considering.

“What, no, seriously?” Jim squawked.

“I ain’t living in a ten-foot by ten-foot rectangle with an infant who won’t pick up their own clothes.” Bones was still looking at him.

“There’s no way it would be legal. Is your divorce even finalized?”

“Last week.” Bones said this quieter than they had been speaking.

“And you’re honestly telling me you’re good to jump into another marriage. This isn’t some kind of rebound?” Jim pushed. They were getting closer to the admin building now. Jim recognized it across the quad from the map they’d consulted earlier before setting off from the shuttle.

Bones gave him a dismissive once-over. “You’re pretty, but not that pretty kid.” 

“I’ll have you know that I’d be an amazing rebound.” Jim wiggled his eyebrows, but some of his concern must’ve leaked through into his expression, just a little something on his face showing he wasn’t serious about the offer because Bones stopped walking and grabbed Jim’s arm, pulling him off the path out of the way of anybody else oncoming.

“I’m fine Jim. Better than fine, actually. This way I won’t be some sob story whose wife left him. And I’m not looking to start anything, so it’ll keep any flirty nurses looking elsewhere for a hot doctor.” 

“Hot doctor? Now who’s the one thinking highly of themselves?” Jim couldn’t keep the smile off his face when he added, “You think you’re the pretty one don’t you, Bones?”

Bones scoffed. “Seriously, I’d understand if you didn’t want to hitch yourself to some old man you just met. But if you’re in, I’m in. We’ve gotta do this now. Today, before we go through intake. Lord almighty, I know what bureaucracy does to a place, and if they assign me a dorm room, there’s no way I’ll get out of it.”

It was a terrible idea. But just another terrible idea in a long string of terrible ideas he managed to execute in the last day and a half that hadn’t ended terribly. Jim’s mind was racing. If he was married to Bones, he’d be legally entitled to share in the room and board granted to Bones as a Starfleet cadet. Jim wouldn’t have to worry about finding an apartment or paying for it. It made him feel a little dirty, thinking about using Bones like that. Honestly, though, it would be convenient, considering that he’d been planning on sneaking back to campus to sit in on course lectures anyways.

“They won’t have an open appointment at city hall. Aren’t those kinds of things usually scheduled weeks in advance?” Jim wouldn’t know. It’s not like he’d actually been married before. God, married. How could he even be thinking about going through with this?

Bones took Jim’s easy acquiescence in stride, pulling out his PADD and the city of San Francisco’s government page before Jim finished talking.

“They’ve got an opening in an hour. If we book it now, I think we can make it.” Bones looked up, and the corner of his mouth ticked up into a grin.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
In the ride uptown to City Hall, Bones started filling out the required forms for a marriage license. Jim took a surreptitious glance over to make sure he was occupied before double checking Starfleet regulations on his own PADD to ensure that the family housing did in fact apply to cadets.

When he was satisfied, he found Bones hovering over the section for the second spouse’s information. All that was filled in was the name, Jim Kirk.

“Give me that.” Jim grabbed the PADD and started correcting information. Jim became James, added Tiberius as a middle name even though he hated it. Might as well make this legal.

“Are we making a mistake? Probably should know more about a guy than his name before we get married.” Bones scowled.

“Getting cold feet on me already? We’ve only been engaged for twenty minutes.” Jim played it off, chuckling, trying to calm down. Bones didn’t want him. Of course, Bones didn’t want him, no one else had ever wanted him either.

Bones calmed immediately, nodding. “You’re right.” Jim did a double take, he had no clue what he was right about, but Bones continued, “There’s more to a man than the kinds of stuff they make you put on paper, and I already know you’re the good kind of man.”

Bones’ words sat heavy in the space between them, but City Hall rolled up ahead of them before Jim got a chance to respond. It was a stately building framed with arches and dark wood doors. They were out of the car, collecting bags that still hadn’t had the chance to be set down yet. Checking in at the front-desk for a last-minute wedding with a duffle slung over his shoulder made it feel like he was running away with Bones and it wasn’t entirely a bad feeling.

They were still twenty minutes early for the appointment. So, they sat on one of the benches built into the great slabs of marble that made up the walls in the hallway outside the courtroom, as Jim checked over the last of the forms.

When he handed the PADD back to Bones, he was startled by a set of hands coming up to grip his face. Tender and meticulous.

“Lemme fix your face, Jim.” Bones murmured as he started running a dermal regenerator pulled from seemingly nowhere over Jim’s skin. “Gotta look pretty for your wedding day.” Bones smirked.

“Shut up.” Jim shoved at Bones’ arms, but not hard enough to jolt the regenerator.

In the end, they spent more time waiting in the hallway than they did in the ceremony itself. It was perfunctory, the city clerk reading a standard statement. They both signed the marriage license before a witness and said their ‘I do’s’. There was a pause there at the end, for the couple to kiss. Apparently, some did, but a lot of the couples who skipped the traditional wedding for a smaller affair at city hall also skipped the kiss.

Bones turned to face him, arms crossed. The one raised eyebrow was what made Jim do it. Lean over into Bones’ space and press a short, sweet peck against his lips. Jim winked as he leaned back, and Bones sighed exasperatedly before pulling Jim back out the way they came.

“Come on then, husband. We’ve got things to do today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The recipe I used for this fic was basically:  
> 1) add the idea of walking around confidently with a clipboard to make it look like you belong  
> 2) multiply by a thousand  
> 3) mix well with favorite tropes  
> 4) serve with two sides of fluff and one side of angst  
> 5) enjoy
> 
> Also, for the record, I head-canon Bones still getting an apartment due to his status as a medical track cadet even without the family housing angle. But of course, Bones is thinking -so- rationally after the turbulent overhaul of his life that he totally remembers such a thing as post-grad housing exists before making even more life-altering decisions.


	2. Chapter 2

City Hall was situated in a centralized area of the city. Streets lined with restaurants and shops looked back at them. Perfectly manicured trees occupying boxes at even intervals of thirty feet. Jim was hungry, having skipped breakfast when he was leaving the house that morning. If they’d gone through normal intake procedures at Starfleet, they might have been at late lunch in the cafeteria by now. Or in Jim’s case secured an apartment and some groceries by now.

Bones did not protest when Jim suggested they grab food at the café across the street before heading back to the Academy. Neither of them had yet to taste the cafeteria food, but it was not something they were eager to try. Plus, they still had intake ahead of them before they even got their room assignment, and they’d only get hungrier as the afternoon drug on.

They were headed to the corner to cross at the traffic signal when a glint in the corner of his eye stopped Jim. He stared through the large glass windows of the storefront. Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and most importantly, wedding bands. Bones was two paces ahead when he realized Jim wasn’t beside him. Then he realized what exactly Jim was looking at.

“No.”

“But, Bones.” Jim whined. He wasn’t quite leaning against the window, but he was very close.

“No, and if you needed a reminder, I’m broke. Ex-wife took everything but my bones remember.” He sent Jim a look.

“I’ll cover it.” Jim said without hesitation. And maybe there was some sentimentality leftover from walking down a picture-perfect street in a new city with Bones at his side about to go get lunch in one of those frou-frou cafés where everything was twice as expensive as it should be. “Didn’t think I’d ever get married, you know. This might be my only chance to pick out wedding rings.”

“Jim,” Bones said it exasperatedly, so Jim jumped in before Bones could argue with him some more.

“My treat. Just think of it as a wedding present.” And for some reason, Jim needed Bones to accept it. With the cost of renting a San Francisco apartment no longer an issue, a basic set of wedding bands wouldn’t even put a dent in Jim’s finances. The sentimentality pushed aside the dirty feeling Jim got at the thought of using Bones for a living situation, so he clung to it.

“Besides, whatever happened to warding off flirty nurses, huh?” Jim glanced at Bones’ hands. “That tan line is pretty inconspicuous. It’s just screaming, ‘I’m the kind of man who enjoys commitment and I’m newly on the market.’” It was doubly obvious next to the bright stone of the ring Bones was already wearing on his pinky. Jim was almost tempted to ask about it but didn’t.

Bones scowled, and it might’ve started being Jim’s new favorite expression on him, when he snapped out, “Fine.”

Inside the shop, after a few basic inquiries, they were led over to a small selection of wedding bands in a display case. Jim pushed forward and Bones trailed behind arms crossed. After being assured that they’d be able to get any of the men’s bands in a matching set, Jim pointed out two of the bands he liked to the attendant to pull out for a closer look.

The first was a classic silver throughout. Solid, dependable, it reminded Jim of Bones. And there was a thought: he already had such a distinct impression of Bones in his mind, that he didn’t hesitate to anthropomorphize jewelry with Bones’ characteristics.

The second design was another silver band, but with an inlay of a midnight blue band and the tiniest twinkling diamonds winking back at Jim like the night sky.

“Bones get over here, which one do you like?”

“You’re paying. You get to pick.”

“Give me your hand.” Jim’s pulled Bones’ arm out from its crossed position and slid the second design on his finger. The simple silver ring might have been more Bones, but the extra sparkle on this one was definitely more Jim. Bones did say he got to pick. And besides, there was a part of Jim that thrilled at the thought of Bones carrying a little piece of Jim around.

“Can I see the match too?” Jim directed the attendant, and suddenly Jim had a matching wedding band on and he was holding their hands next to each other out in front of him.

“What do you think?” Jim bit his lip, looking up at Bones.

“Nice,” Bones mumbled. Jim ran his thumbs across the back of Bones’ knuckles before letting go.

“Yeah.” It came out a little breathless. Jim turned to the attendant and said more strongly, “We’ll take these ones.”  
  
◦◦◦  
  
The sandwiches were good. Still not worth double the price, but they were good. They’d been mostly silent since leaving the jeweler, but the din of the café made up for a lot, so it wasn’t a tense silence.

Jim finished before Bones, so he sat there twiddling the ring around his finger, thinking. He’d gotten a living situation secured. Or at least he would once Starfleet processed their housing assignment. Now he just needed to figure out how to enroll in classes without being enlisted. How hard would it be to hack the Starfleet network? The grades were probably stored on a secure server, but maybe the class enrollment lists themselves were vulnerable to Jim’s special brand of hacking?

“Jim.”

“Huh?” Jim snapped to attention.

“Stop fidgeting.” Bones took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. Jim was caught watching the muscles in Bones’ neck work. “You don’t have to wear it you know.”

“You’re wearing it.”

“I’m used to wearing one, kid.”

“So, you don’t want me to wear it.” Jim frowned.

“That’s not what I meant. We could go back. For a chain. Hang it around your neck. It doesn’t have to be so, …” Bones paused, looked back down to Jim’s hands. “Obvious.”

“Hm,” Jim pondered for all of about one second. He didn’t want to lose it, this tangible link between him and Bones. Knowing himself and exactly where his hands sometimes ended up, a chain might actually be more secure. “Alright.”

In the jewelers once more, the attendant smiled at them, obviously recognizing the return visitors. Bones picked out the chain, a fine silver link that was almost as expensive as the rings were.

When Jim went to pay, Bones waved him off. “I’ve got it.”

“You’re broke remember.”

“I’ve got it, or did you forget I’m the Doctor.” Bones said doctor with a capital d, “They’ll put me on shift at the med-center by next week and I’ll start getting paid by the week after that.”

Jim swallowed, nodded. Then Bones took the ring off Jim’s finger, threaded the chain, and pulled it over Jim’s head. He stepped back to look at the ring dangling just below the line of Jim’s collarbones before reaching forward once more to tuck the ring and chain into Jim’s shirt. Bones smoothed the spot and all that was visible was a faint raised outline and a hint of the chain peeking out from Jim’s collar.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
The first time they stepped onto Starfleet grounds as a married couple was when Leonard realized that absolutely nothing about this marriage would be conventional. It would also be nothing like the cut-and-dry roommates with a marriage certificate situation he initially thought it was going to be either.

Jim was walking a little closer in proximity as they made their way across the quad for the second time that day. But it could’ve also been that Leonard’s awareness of Jim had increased over the last couple of hours. Leonard found himself constantly looking over, checking Jim’s body language for the tenseness that would indicate regret. But each time he saw Jim’s confident stride and the satisfied little smile on his face, Leonard’s heart rate picked up in a way that was not consistent with a new acquaintance-turned roommate.

The rings were not necessary. There were plenty of couples who didn’t bother with the physical trappings of their affections. That’s how Leonard thought they were going to play this if somebody asked. And then Jim turned his goddamn puppy eyes on Leonard, and he felt his tenuous control of this situation slip right out of his fingers. If Jim wanted the rings, who was Leonard to say no?

The kid probably only wanted the rings for their novelty, like this was all some kind of big joke. It wasn’t a joke to Leonard. He remembered the weight of the metal on his finger, how it kept him grounded in those first few good years with Jocelyn. And then how constricting it felt, a noose that wouldn’t let go when things took a turn for the worse.

When he took off the ring from his first marriage for the first time, he’d expected to feel liberated, free to do whatever the hell he wanted. The reality was the freedom was more suffocating than the weight of expectations that came with the ring. He had no anchor and he got lost in himself for hours at a time trying to find something to keep himself together. First his Dad died, then Jocelyn left him, it had felt like his life was falling apart at the seams and there was nothing to hold him together.

The promise of a new anchor – with Jim – was almost too good. He’d felt himself settle a bit with the new ring. It wasn’t healthy. He knew it wasn’t healthy latching onto Jim like he was an emotional-support puppy. But it still probably beat out how he’d been drowning himself in alcohol before this.

The calm the ring had brought him lasted all of about five minutes before he’d noticed Jim fiddling with his own and Leonard felt his stomach flip in anxiety. Goddamnit, it felt like he was staking a claim. Tying the kid down unnecessarily. Jim was still young; he didn’t need to feel the weight of a responsibility like this.

For some reason, Jim was adamant about wearing the thing. Probably didn’t think it would be fair if Leonard did and he didn’t. That’s why Leonard suggested the chain. Let the kid wear the ring without tying him down.

Leonard came back to himself as he felt Jim sidle up even closer, letting their hands brush together as they walked. He looked up to find themselves at the threshold of the Admin building. Grabbing Jim’s hand, he pushed the doors open. Time for a show then.

Jim was twitchy. And it got progressively worse the whole way up the lift to the third floor as they followed the signs to the offices in Wing F. The picture of nervous anxiety, Leonard couldn’t fathom what the kid was anxious about. They’d already played at being a happy couple in the courtroom and the jewelers so it couldn’t be that.

As soon as Leonard rang the little bell on the receptionist’s desk, it was like he flipped a switch in Jim. Suddenly he was the cool, confident Jim Kirk that had swaggered into the shuttle that morning again.

“Just a second.” Came out from the back room.

“No problem, Brenda. Can I call you Brenda?” Jim was leaning into the desk reading the helpful nameplate posted at the edge.

“Of course.” Brenda said as she rounded the corner of the cubicles. She was a middle-aged woman with a set of glasses perched precariously on the tip of her nose that did nothing to mask the hard steel in her eyes of a lady that was not to be messed with. “Now what can I do for you boys?”

“Check-in and intake for new cadets. For me and my husband.” Leonard emphasized the word husband, squeezing their still-joined hands in a small warning to Jim.

“Yes, let’s get you two settled right away, I didn’t think we’d be getting anymore new cadets today. The last shuttle came by a few hours ago. We were just about to close up the office.” Brenda informed them.

“We took a bit of a tour around downtown. Wanted to take in the sights before we settled in for the semester.” Jim turned his smile on her, “Hope you understand.”

Brenda took their names before handing them both PADDs with the enlistment forms pulled open for them to confirm and sign acknowledgment of their check-in. Leonard zoned out her intake spiel, catching the important phrases as he checked over the information. Uniform pickup down the hall, regulation pictures for ID cards, appointments with advisors to pick classes, mandatory physical at the med-center.

He was grateful the enlistment forms were mostly correct, considering how drunk he’d been when he’d filled them out just a few days ago. He’d already done enough paperwork today just to get married. Speaking of which – apparently there was one thing this bureaucracy was useful for – their marriage must have already been processed by Starfleet’s system. Under the line listing immediate family members, there was a new addition:

James T. Kirk (spouse)

It was a link, and when Leonard clicked it, he managed to pull up Jim’s file. Most of the information there was familiar as well, from the paperwork he’d done this afternoon. Jim’s aptitude scores were off-the-charts good. The only curious thing was that the tests were dated several years ago, like he’d decided to enlist a while ago and then backed out at the last second.

Leonard was pondering what could have made Jim decide to re-enlist now when his eyes wandered down to the immediate family section. Curious to see his own name on Jim’s file, he was shocked out of his train of thought when he saw the names listed there.

Leonard H. McCoy (spouse)  
George Kirk, Captain, deceased (father)  
Winona Kirk, Lieutenant Commander (mother)  
G. Samuel Kirk (brother)

Kirk wasn’t that common of a last name, but it wasn’t that uncommon either. Jim wasn’t just any old Kirk though. He was the son of George Kirk, the captain of the USS Kelvin, who ended up saving everyone else on board at the cost of his own life. It wasn’t something that most people thought about on the day-to-day, considering it had been over twenty years ago now. But it also wasn’t the kind of thing that people tended to forget. That kind of reputation would be hard to escape at Starfleet.

All of a sudden it felt like an intrusion. Jim hadn’t told him any of this. They were only married for the housing assignment. And he only had access to Jim’s file because they were married. Exiting the file quickly, he signed off on his own, and looked back up in time to catch Brenda talking about the housing assignments.

“… sharing door codes is strictly prohibited. There is an emergency code for authorized personnel to enter in emergency situations. For security reasons, you must pick a new door code every 90 days. If you forget your code, you can reset it at one of the bio-metric authentication stations in the lobby of each building. Due to budgeting issues, we unfortunately don’t include biometric security on every door. Do you have any questions about that?”

“Brenda,” Leonard was the one to lean in this time. Brenda had taken all of Jim’s teasing flirtation with a grain of salt and good humor, so it shouldn’t hurt him to do this either. “Jim and I wanted to make sure we got set up in a family housing unit. Could you tell us what our assignment is?”

Jim backed him up immediately, “We completely understand if family housing is a hard request to fulfill, since we came last-minute.” They were there only three days before classes started. Cutting it close indeed. “But if you could put us together, we would really appreciate it.”

Brenda just laughed at them. The serious energy they were putting forth into practically begging for an apartment going to complete waste in the face of her reaction. “Oh, you boys have nothing to worry about. They have three times as many empty family units as they do standard dorms.”

Brenda paused and looked up conspiratorially, “Do you know how hard it is to recruit a humble hard-working family these days? Compared to all these upstart youths who think they’re invincible?” The question was rhetorical, obviously, when Brenda continued, “It looks like you are in block C apartment 276. Oh, it says here you have a daughter, Joanna, is that right?”

Leonard felt Jim stiffen next to him, but Brenda just plowed right on talking, “Normally we wouldn’t give out extra rooms for children who are not primary dependents. But I can get you set up in one of the larger units with a home office that can convert to a second bedroom. Then Joanna would have somewhere to stay for visits. How does that sound?”

Leonard’s face fell into a gracious smile that oozed southern charm as he uttered their acceptance.  
  
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Jim tugged at the starched collar of the Cadet dress uniform that abruptly felt altogether too tight around his neck as he waited for the kid behind the camera to finish taking Bones’ official picture. As soon as Bones was finished, it would be his turn to stand on the mark in front of the one white wall in this office clearly designated for the specific purpose of taking enlistment photos.

With each new person he met and convinced on this charade of becoming a Starfleet Cadet, his nerves had not died down. After Brenda had shuffled them off to collect uniforms, Jim’s nerves shot up once again. The housing assignment wasn’t technically illegal, no matter how duplicitous his intentions could be made out to be. Wearing the uniform though…, Jim might not have even put it on if the kid behind the counter had bothered to take one look up at them before shoving two stacks of bundled fabric across the table that divided them from him. Clearly, whatever aspirations the kid had when he joined Starfleet, sitting behind a desk in an Admin building had not lived up to them.

All too soon, Bones left his mark against the wall, looking up and away from the camera to catch Jim in eye contact. Jim stepped forward, and his mouth opened to make a wisecrack remark about couples wedding photos before he shut it with a loud clack of his teeth. The wry smile on Bones’ face in response wouldn’t be worth the wash of dread he felt bubbling up at the thought of his deceit. Jim would make all the wiseass comments he felt like - as soon as he got out of this pompous uniform.

The kid didn’t bother to ask him to smile for the camera. A bland countdown of, “3, …, 2, …, 1, …” was all the warning Jim got to drag his eyes away from the muscles in Bones’ back, where he was changing back into his civilian clothes in the center of the office without a care. Jim pasted on a smile on just in time for the flash.

When he had a Starfleet issued ID card in his hands five minutes later, with his own face staring back at him, Jim idly thought the picture wasn’t half bad. The word ‘Cadet’ printed underneath his name was the real kicker.

Did they just have pre-printed IDs at the ready for all Cadets who came through waiting for a name and a photo to get filled into the blanks? Or had at some point today, someone looked at his file and then up at the face of wholesome Americana that Jim Kirk represented with his corn-fed laid-back attitude and decided to overlook whatever the box for enlistment status read on his file? Had Brenda decided that a genius-level recruit like Jim, who came with his charming doctor of a husband couldn’t possibly not be a recruit? Had she seen what would have been in her mind a typo – a bureaucratic mistake - and fixed his forms in the system? Or was the kid at the uniform counter just too lazy to check details before issuing a standard card and uniform set he probably gave out hundreds of times a day?

Jim couldn’t ask, because once he did, he would give the game away. He forced himself to put the card in his wallet. He even bothered to shuffle the various cards and licenses around to put the Starfleet one at the very front of the stack, like it was his most important form of identification.  
  
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Bones dropped his bag on the ground and immediately flopped onto the couch of their new apartment. Throwing an arm over his eyes with a groan, he said, “Thank god. This day is almost over.”

Jim walked past him into the kitchen, taking in the furniture and appliances. It was neat and useable, if somewhat lacking in personality.

“Don’t you want to see the rest? After we put all that work into getting this place, you should appreciate it.”

“I can bask in the atmosphere just as well from right here. Thank you very much.” Bones made no moves to get up as Jim poked his head first in the hall closet, followed by the bathroom, the master bedroom and finally the second bedroom currently made up as a home office.

Jim was dumping the contents of his bag into the dresser in the bedroom when Bones called from the living room, “What track are you going for kid? Don’t think you ever said. Mine’s obvious what with already being a doctor and all.”

“Hm, I’ve always been good at science and engineering, but that’s not really where I see myself.” Jim hedged, as he returned to the kitchen and proceeded to open and close every drawer and take stock of exactly what kinds of utensils Starfleet supplied them with. “I’d rather do something working more with people. It’d give me a chance to work on my diplomacy.”

“What, like communications? You want to go negotiate treaties and alliances and shit?”

Jim huffed a laugh, “More like command.” This was his fantasy after all, he could be whatever he wanted to be. “I’d double or triple tracks. A starship captain’s got to know at least a bit of everything to lead effectively.”

Bones rolled over to glance over the back of the couch and met Jim’s eyes from the kitchen. His gaze was steady, sizing Jim up and down for his ability to become a captain. Jim looked away before he could read in Bones’ eyes what the results of his evaluation were. He wasn’t sure what would scare him more: if Bones believed in him, or if he didn’t.

A comm beeped from somewhere in the apartment, and Jim jumped to go check his where he’d left it on top of the dresser in the bedroom, when Bones called out.

“It’s mine.” Bones waved the device back and forth in the air triumphantly, from his spot on the couch. His bag had finally been cracked open; its contents dumped on the floor in the search. “Can’t get half an hour of rest in this place, can you?” He muttered as he read the message, already moving again despite his previous insistence to stay rooted on the couch. “I’ve got to get to medical. Apparently, my shifts start tomorrow not next week, and I get the tour and a go through their systems tonight.”

“Yeah, that’s fine Bones. I’ll see you later.” Bones didn’t look like he registered Jim’s goodbye, he left without a backward glance.

For the first time in almost twelve hours Jim was left without his company. In the wake of everything that had happened, he sat on the couch that Bones just vacated and tried to process. He felt like it should feel more unreal. It should be more exciting, more dangerous, more anxiety-inducing. As it was, he toed through the pile of unfolded clothes that had been unceremoniously dumped on the floor and couldn’t find it in himself to dredge up any of the nerves he’d been feeling earlier in the day.

Nothing ever quite got to Jim like a good helping of rebellion to authority. In this apartment, in the absence of any authority, or even any low-totem figure head of authority like Brenda from Admin, Jim was calm. He had a roof over his head. He had a working replicator in the kitchen (he checked). He had a husband. Bones would be back. Bones lived there too, now.

Jim stood and shoved all of Bones’ stuff back into his bag. He dumped it out again in the drawer of the dresser beneath the one Jim put his own stuff in earlier. There was a clank as a hollo fell out from the shirt hastily wrapped around it and knocked against the drawer. Jim picked it up. It must have been Joanna. The little girl had Bones’ eyes, with soft curling brown hair. She looked about 6 years old.

Right. Bones had a daughter that he hadn’t bothered to mention at all before they got married. There was no problem at all with the fact that technically, Jim could be considered a stepfather now. Jim put the hollo on the top of the dresser facing out towards the room.

Jim didn’t have any hollos of his own. In fact, neither of them had brought much. A few changes of clothes each. PADDs and communicators. Jim hung the dress uniforms in the closet. The reds of the everyday uniforms went in the third drawer in the dresser.

A nagging itch of a thought in the back of his mind wanted Jim to spend the rest of daylight hours trudging up and down campus until he knew the ins and outs of every building. He settled for finding the library and trudging up and down aisles of old academic PADDs.

Technically, everything here could be uploaded to the network to be accessible from anywhere. Because Starfleet was publicly funded all of their research and library materials had to be publicly available. But Starfleet was also a bunch of bureaucrats who made everything ten steps harder than it needed to be. The research was accessible from anywhere via the network if you had Starfleet credentials. Anyone from the public who wanted access had to come in person and pull the correct PADD from the shelves themselves if they wanted access.

In addition to giving the library the ambiance of a place of learning, the shelves were also a great deterrent to anyone outside of Starfleet who wanted to learn anything. They kept Starfleet knowledge safely within the walls of Starfleet.

As Jim wandered the aisles, he kept track of the names of the various sections and made note of specific titles of works he thought looked interesting. Then he sat in a corner and spent five hours cross-referencing the Academy course catalog, the Academy time schedule for the upcoming semester, the curriculum requirements for the tracks for command, engineering, and communications, and the Academy faculty listing. He may not have an academic advisor, but if he was going to do this, he was going to do this right.

The grounds of the quad looked different in the dark as Jim made his way back to the apartment. Not eerie, not creepy, just different, with the wide walkway glowing under the contrast of the lamps, and the peripheral signage and buildings barely visible without the glow of the midday or mid-afternoon sun.

Bones wasn’t home when Jim got back with a crick in his neck and a PADD with a plan in his hand. Jim very deliberately decided not to worry. He replicated some soup for a late dinner and then went to bed.

Bones came in around midnight, waking Jim from a light doze at the sounds of shuffling around. It was a hassle to get relaxed enough to sleep in this new place, with the new sounds and a new mattress. A mattress he felt dip when Bones sat down.

“Welcome back.” Jim muttered into his pillow.

“G’night, Jim.” Bones lifted the covers to slide in next to Jim.

“’Night.” And then Jim was out again.


	3. Chapter 3

Jim made breakfast, standing in the kitchen in just the pair of old plaid pajama pants he’d worn to bed. Or, well, he meant to make breakfast before he hesitated over the replicator. Should he make food for Bones? Were they doing the whole domestic thing with eating together and splitting chores?

In a lame attempt to avoid the problem, Jim altered the standard breakfast to stop it from putting out a jam that he was allergic to. The color of the indicator light blinked from blue to green to show that the new program input was accepted. And then he was back to hovering a hand over the up arrow that would change one serving into two.

If Bones were awake, this wouldn’t have been a problem because then he could just tell Jim if he was eating. But he wasn’t and Jim hated wasting food. Jim moved his hand without thinking because that’s the only way he could increment the meal servings without hyperventilating. Pressing hard onto the machine’s start button, it was a matter of minutes to have two plates of replicated toast, eggs, and bacon in hand. If Bones wasn’t up by the time he left, Jim would just leave the food out for him. And if he didn’t eat it, Jim wouldn’t have to see the food going into the recycler.

Just as Jim set the table, Bones joined him, with mussed hair, wearing a t-shirt and a pair of low-slung sweatpants hanging on his hips.

Bones gave Jim a grunt of acknowledgement as he sat down across from him.

“You got home late last night.” Jim said after he finished inhaling his eggs. Immediately suppressing a cringe because that sounded way too much like he was a jealous cow who didn’t trust his husband.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Orientation took all of ten minutes flat. But then I got roped into doing a consult on an Andorian’s spinal reconstruction. Had to go brush up on some Andorian physiology.” Bones spoke while he chewed.

“So, it was good then. Interesting?” Jim grinned up at Bones.

“Yeah.” Bones admitted grudgingly.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. The smell of coffee lingered in the air, and their silverware clinked against enameled ceramic. Jim studied the whorls and knots in the faux-wood texturized print of their tabletop. It was off somehow; the whorls were too regular in size and too uniform in spacing.

Maybe Jim should buy a tablecloth? Shopping for more things for their apartment could be fun. Jim could make their apartment into a real home. He’d never decorated a place before. Never had a real need for new furniture at the old Kirk farmhouse. Would Bones care what he picked out? Would Bones want to come?

A cream color would look nice on the table. But a darker color might be easier to clean. It would depend on the selection and whether Jim wanted to go matchy-matchy with everything else he picked out. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine going shopping and coming home with only a tablecloth.

“Did you get stuck in all the bullshit intro classes too?” Bones mused.

“Not exactly.”

Bones looked up sharply, expression awake for the first time that morning. “What the hell does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“I’m visiting some faculty office hours today.” Jim said through a slightly sheepish look. Even though office hours were only listed for Monday through Friday, and today was a Saturday, Jim would bet there were more than just a handful of professors who would be taking the time to finish up their class materials before the first day of instruction on Monday. “I figure if I go beg them in person, I’ve got a better shot at getting into some upper level classes that I’m not qualified for.” His plan sounded even more stupid spoken aloud. “I don’t have time for the intro classes, there’s not enough overlap between tracks to do it any other way.”

Bones stared at him. “You’re insane.” And when Jim just shrugged nonchalantly back at him, a piece of toast hanging from his mouth, Bones continued into a tirade, “I thought you were joking, one track is hard enough as it is.”

“But you think I can do it.” Jim held Bones’ gaze, questioning.

“Yes, of course I think you can do it. But just because you _can_ do it doesn’t mean you should.” Bones snapped out a reply immediately, no hesitation. “You’re going to run yourself ragged. Sleep isn’t a conspiracy to take up your free time you know!”

“You’ll make sure I get enough sleep though, won’t you?”

Bones didn’t contradict him, just stood to put his plate in the sink, grumbling something like ‘insufferable idiot’ under his breath. But Jim could see his smile as he turned away.  
  
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Professor Schmulevich wasn’t in his office when Jim tried the door. Professor Vestra was though. Jim found the man standing in front of a board riddled with hastily scrawled equations. The door was already open, allowing Jim to enter unimpeded only to have to immediately step over a stack of PADDs left lying in the middle of the floor.

“Professor?”

“Yes?” The man didn’t bother to look up at Jim as he answered.

“My name is Jim Kirk. I’d like to petition to be allowed into your Astro-mechanics class.”

“Is the class full? Do you need me to sign something?” He sighed, motioning over with his hand as if to take the non-existent form he was referencing.

“Ah, no. Not as far as I’m aware. What I meant was I’d like permission to skip the pre-requisite courses. I’m aware there is no formal process for being allowed to test out of classes, but I think I could keep up with the material.”

Professor Vestra finally looked up at that. “You do realize Astro-mechanics is an elective, right? Most students never bother finishing the series after completing A Survey of Astral Bodies in Motion and Stellar Thermodynamics.”

Jim fought with his lips to keep them from pulling into a grin. “Yes, but I’d still like to take your class.”

Professor Vestra’s face didn’t change from the concentrated expression he had originally leveled at the equations to his left. “I’ll allow it. Honestly, I couldn’t care less as long as you don’t disturb the class. There’ll be a two-week trial period and if you can keep up, I’ll add you to the class list.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Was there anything else?”

Jim hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he should ask about recommendations for reviewing the pre-req material, when he had just assured the man that he was qualified to be in the class. When he caught the irritated tilt of the Professor’s mouth, Jim finally answered, “No, sir.”

Professor Vestra let out a breath of air. “Then run along.”

“Yes, professor.” Jim was gone.

The success of one class down, Jim walked energized to his next three meetings. Professor Ardelum flat out refused Jim’s request, but Professor Polluck, who taught the same course as Ardelum, just at a different time of day, sat and fiddled with something on his PADD while Jim waited in silence for two minutes before looking up and allowing the request.

Jim still wasn’t sure if Polluck looked up Jim’s file, or something about the course, or if the man got a message, responded to it, and forgot Jim was there entirely and then felt guilty enough about it to appease Jim’s request. Whatever it was, Jim didn’t much care if it meant he was allowed into the class.

The xeno-cultural studies professor Jim spoke to did actually bother to vet Jim, interrogating him in a series of questions before she gave Jim the go-ahead.

With three classes settled, Jim considered the day a success. He didn’t want to push his luck trying to petition for an intro class like Navigation that he planned on attending anyways. There were no pre-requisites for him to be supposedly petitioning out of, so he wouldn’t have that as an excuse. But the magic of intro courses was that they usually had an enrollment in the hundreds. No one would notice an extra student sitting in the back.  
  
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Sprawling out under a soft fuzzy blanket was simply heaven. Jim was curled up on the couch under just such a blanket when Bones walked into the living room.

“Is that the blanket from our bed?” Bones said, a tad incredulously.

“’S not like we have any other blankets.” Jim mentally added a throw for the couch to the list of items he was compiling to go purchase at some point.

There was a brief pause as Bones stared at him before Bones seemed to shrug it off and proceeded to the kitchen.

When Bones came back from messing with something in the kitchen, he had two plates of pasta in hand.

“Scooch over.” Bones commanded with what was presumably Jim’s plate held just out of reach in what seemed to be either bribe or extortion. The couch was not particularly large, but it would hold both of them no problem. Especially if they sat in an upright position with spines straight against the cushions, which Jim was definitely not doing.

Jim blinked bleary-eyed and moved his feet as he asked, “There’s no yellow tomatoes in that right?”

“No. You a picky eater?” Bones sat and passed the plate over. Jim’s feet immediately settled into Bones’ lap. Bones smacked them. “Get your nasty feet out of my food.”

“I’m allergic.” Jim tucked his toes under Bones’ thigh. His body heat warmed up Jim’s cold feet just right.

Bones eyes widened. “That shouldn’t even be possible! Red tomatoes and yellow tomatoes are the same fruit!”

Bones watched eagle-eyed as Jim speared a red grape tomato with his fork and took a bite. Jim barely resisted the urge to shrink under the man’s scrutiny.

“I’m fine.” Jim stuck out his tongue. “See? No swelling, no redness, no hives.”

“Not every allergy presents itself immediately and not every allergy presents as swelling and hives.” A fact to which Jim knew too well from experience already. “Give me a list of your allergies and I’ll put it in the replicator. It’ll automatically filter out any dishes with ingredients you’re allergic to.”

Jim laughed. If they did that, him and Bones would be eating plain toast and rice cakes for all of the near future. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll re-program it tomorrow.”

Bones didn’t look at all happy with that but he settled with saying, “You’ve got an emergency allergy hypo, right?”

Jim sent him a look that said plainly he thought Bones was an idiot if he could think that Jim was enough of an idiot to not have one. “Yeah, there’s two in my bag, and the rest are in the top left drawer in the kitchen.”

“Good.” Bones turned his attention to the screen and immediately blanched. “Who decided on watching bugs during dinner?”

“It’s a documentary on the lifecycles of non-Terran insects.” Jim slurped up some tomato sauce. “And the answer to that’s obvious. There’s nobody else here except you and me. Unless you already gave the door code to somebody. You got a secret lover hiding in the closet I need to be jealous of?” Jim prodded, fishing for information.

It wasn’t like he had a monopoly over Bones or anything. Just because they were married didn’t mean he owned the man. But Bones did say part of the reason they were doing this thing was to keep people’s attention off of him.

No matter how unlikely it was for Bones to have already gained an admirer, Jim almost couldn’t believe that no one noticed him. The man was very attractive. Something in the way he was clean-shaven but had a look about him that a good scruff of five o’clock shadow could pop up at any minute.

Bones scowled at him. “The only lover in my life won’t last long if he doesn’t turn off the bugs while we’re eating.”

Jim hadn’t really been watching all that hard before, but now that Bones didn’t want to watch it, Jim suddenly had the urge to see Bones squirm. “We weren’t eating when I turned it on. What? Don’t you think the two-stage hatching of the red arach-polids are interesting? The phased development of their nervous system has interesting implications for regenerative nerve therapies.”

“What I find interesting is the fact that over eighty percent of critters like that carry a whole host of pathogenic agents. Anybody getting close enough to study their nervous systems is exposing themselves to all kinds of disease. And ten percent of ‘em are freaking parasites themselves.”

“They’re only pathogenic to the native inhabitants of their planets. There’s less than a tenth of a percent chance of any one of those diseases leaping the species barrier.” Jim said this in his best ‘no, duh’ voice.

“Sure. But anybody who doesn’t find those creepy crawlies disturbing has something wrong with them.” Bones was caving, Jim could see it happening before his eyes.

Jim leaned in to pat Bones on the knee. “There’s only fifteen minutes left, we can watch something else after that.”

They finished their dinners with comments here and there about exactly how disturbing some of the blue slime excretions were and Bones must not have been as squeamish as he played at being because not once did he look anywhere near as nauseous as he had when they’d first met on the shuttle. Kind of figured, what with him being a doctor and all. Couldn’t get far in that field without a strong stomach.

They ended up leaving on the next vid that popped up in the queue. It was another documentary, but this one was on the particular combination of gravity and knee structure of some kind of Orion creature that looked like a bear that allowed it to jump so high it practically flew in its native forests.

Jim probably would’ve turned the vid off halfway through and gone to bed if he’d been alone. But Bones’ attention was glued to the screen and Jim didn’t want to disturb the moment.

The credits rolled. Jim untangled from his cocoon and stood, turning towards the bedroom to start winding down. He shook himself to clear just enough of the cobwebs from his brain so that he’d manage to find the bed.

The soft weave of the blanket dropped into his field of vision, almost choking him as he sucked in his next breath.

“Hey!” Jim wrangled with the fabric for a second before it settled over his shoulders like the cape of a magnificent king’s court attire.

Bones was laughing at him, one hand held in front of his mouth to stifle his giggles in the sudden quiet of the room. “You looked cold. Couldn’t resist.”

“When you wake up tomorrow, you better count yourself lucky I didn’t smother you in your sleep.” Jim clutched the ends closed around him. It was warm.

When he turned once more towards the bedroom, Jim paused in a single split second of tension where he thought this was when Bones would insist they take turns on the bed. Never mind the fact that they shared perfectly fine yesterday.

But there wasn’t any discussion of either of them sleeping on the floor, or the couch. The second bedroom was still set up with office furniture.

Bones shook his head at Jim and turned away wordlessly, finally managing to temper his fit of giggles.

Jim stripped off his shirt as Bones sat and peeled off his socks. They took turns washing up in the bathroom before crawling into bed. Jim called for the computer to turn off the lights.

“I hope you know that you’ve lost all rights to share this blanket forever.” Even as he said it, Jim could feel his cheeks stretched taught from smiling so hard into the dark.

“Fine with me, darlin’.” A single quiet laugh and no remorse at all for crowning him with a pile of fabric came from the man lying next to him under the comforter. Jim brought the ends of his blanket closer to his chest, snuggling deeper into the warmth.  
  
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Their second morning waking up together went much the same as the first. Leonard found himself cracking his eyes open to the smell of eggs and bacon a full hour before he had set his alarm to wake him. He switched the alarm off dutifully before he forgot about it and it surprised him in an hour.

Leonard gratefully accepted the plate Jim put before him as he sat down even as he mumbled, “We can’t keep eating like this.”

“Why not?”

Leonard groaned. He would miss bacon. It had been back in his life for only two days before this next regretful goodbye. “Too much cholesterol. You know that thing that clogs your arteries faster than a sorority girl clogs a shower drain with long blonde hair.”

“Cholesterol is a medically necessary nutrient.” Jim practically pouted.

“In quantities so low you’d get enough just from breathing heavily over a plate of bacon, sure.” Leonard paused to take a sip of coffee. “I’ll let you make that argument when I see your bloodwork telling me you’re insufficient in cholesterol in your diet.” Leonard paused again. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen you come by medical. You still need a physical don’t you?”

Jim stalled. The path of his fork slowing as it moved closer and closer to his mouth. Busted.

“They’re required for a reason Jim. You won’t be able to participate in training exercises or hand-to-hand combat until you do one.”

“I’ll go.” Jim capitulated much easier than Leonard expected and he glanced back up again surprised.

“Great.”

“I’ll go,” Jim repeated slowly, “But you have to be the one to give me a physical.”

“You do know I’m a surgeon, right?”

“But you are qualified to give me a physical?”

“Let me reiterate this and we’ll see if we can get it to stick in that thick skull of yours. Just because you _can_ do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

“It’s a great idea.” And damn if it didn’t look like Jim genuinely believed that. “You already know me. I don’t – I don’t like doctors.”

“You seem to like me well enough.”

Jim barked out a laugh. “See. All the more reason for you to be my doctor. Besides, you need the practice giving physicals to prep for when I’m a starship captain and you’re my CMO.”

Leonard didn’t know what it was about the kid, but he couldn’t find it in himself to say no. He didn’t like it because with the direction this was heading he didn’t think he’d be able to say no when the time came that Jim really asked him to head out into space on a Starship with him.

They left earlier than Leonard had been planning on to make it to medical before Leonard’s shift was scheduled for. Grabbing a free room, he started the standard exam routine, grumbling all the while about what was and wasn’t in his job description.

Jim helpfully pointed out and described in graphic detail several procedures involving the re-construction of some specific mucous membranes that would be included in his job description that would no doubt be more unpleasant than giving a physical. So, when Leonard found out that Jim was behind in three vaccinations, Leonard spitefully pressed them a bit harder into Jim’s skin than strictly necessary. He thought the wash of vindictive satisfaction that flowed over him was entirely justified.

When Jim started listing his allergies, Leonard gaped for a half second before letting out a low whistle, “You weren’t kidding, huh?”

There was a bit of a surprise when Jim’s scans came back with evidence of malnutrition in adolescence leading to stunted – and later repaired – bone growth. Jim shrugged it off with a grimace when he was asked about it, “Spent some time on a colony world that didn’t have a consistent food supply.”

And that must have been an understatement of the year, but Leonard let it go all the same. Jim was fine now. As unpleasant as the treatment must have been at the time, there were no medical repercussions left over from the accelerated growth cycles used to rectify Jim’s body.

The real point of contention came in the last few minutes of the exam. Jim had passed every non-invasive test Leonard could program the tricorder to take readings on. Leonard was sitting at the console dutifully typing to fill out the rest of the analysis of Jim’s readings, when he pointed it out.

“You don’t have an emergency contact on file.”

“Yeah.” Jim shrugged like it was no big deal.

“You need to have an emergency contact. It’s required. You know, in case of emergencies?” Leonard swiveled on the chair in front of the console to face Jim. “So, who’s it going to be?”

“I don’t need one.” Jim sent a challenging look his way. Leonard couldn’t tell if the kid was being combative just to pick a fight or if he genuinely believed that.

“I know you’ve still got your mom and brother listed as family in your file. Now I’m gonna count to ten and if you haven’t picked one, I’ll pick for you.”

“Bones, please, let it go. They’re both off planet. It wouldn’t make sense trying to contact either of them in an emergency. By the time they heard, the whole thing would have blown over.”

“Five seconds left.”

“Fine. You. Put yourself as my emergency contact. You count as immediate family now right?” Jim stood suddenly. His whole face closed down as he grabbed his shirt to re-dress. The paper lining the exam table crinkled as Jim jumped off it. “We done here?”

Leonard didn’t get a chance to respond before Jim stormed out of the exam room. Leonard didn’t go after him. They technically were done with the exam and it wasn’t like he could just leave before his upcoming shift. He turned back to the console and sighed. He didn’t like being a part of it, whatever _it_ was with Jim’s drama with his family. But having Leonard looking out for Jim would be better than nothing. Leonard keyed in his own name under emergency contact.

The off-planet story could have been an excuse, but at least if something happened Leonard could play messenger and keep Jim’s mom and brother in the loop.

After resetting the exam room for the next patient, he was still too early for his shift, so he lurked around the nurses station trying to get the charts for the rest of his patients. This backfired spectacularly, as the nurse on shift – he thought her name started with an s, Selina? Stacy? – proceeded to start the usual interrogation session that would eventually end with every word he said being repeated verbatim amongst the medical staff as the latest gossip on the new guy.

He answered half-heartedly with his mind still on Jim. Yes, he’s from the south, Georgia in fact. No, he can’t say if he likes it in San Francisco yet, hasn’t been here long enough to form an opinion one way or the other. His mind stuttered a bit when she asked if he was married, while gesturing at his ring, where his fingers were drumming on the edge of the desk, impatient for the files he needed.

“Second marriage, actually.” Came out of his mouth before his brain caught up with him, and then he frowned a bit, because that description totally dis-serviced Jim. He had a hard time even putting Jim and Jocelyn into the same mental spaces in his brain long enough to compare the two. But when he did manage it, Jim seemed to consistently come out on a completely different level from Jocelyn.

Leonard backtracked immediately, “His name’s Jim. We haven’t been married nearly as long as I was married to my ex-wife, but it’s already a thousand times easier. The two of us together, we just work. And I can only see us getting better from here on out.”

Stacy – or whatever her name was – smiled at him, that dreamy giddy kind of smile that meant she was imagining something ten times as romantic as Leonard intended. Altogether it wasn’t that gushy of a sentiment to hear out of a married man’s mouth. But Leonard was not the kind of guy who usually expressed that much, period. He’d only known Jim a handful of days at this point, and the scariest part of it was that every word he’d spoken was entirely true.

Leonard interrupted her before she could comment, asking for his charts so that he could beat a hasty retreat before he said anything else incriminating.  
  
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For the first time, Leonard was home earlier than Jim that night. And he took advantage of the fact to pull up the local news on the view-screen. Generally, he didn’t watch much content, too busy with work most of his waking hours, and his free time spent intoxicated another good portion. But the news was zero commitment, zero effort as opposed to the mental energy required to pay attention to some convoluted melo-drama plot line.

They were playing a piece about the opening of the remodel of an exhibit at the aquarium. Leonard half-watched, more glad for the sound to fill the silence than he was about the subject-matter of the story, as he finally took the chance to look over his own class schedule in prep for the next day.

He hadn’t been in school for years, and it’d been even longer since he’d been in one of those sit-down, shut-up and copy all the notes kind of traditional classes. The first day of school had him nervous and it made him feel like a freakin’ five-year old leaving his parents for the first time. His heart panged at the thought of all the first days of school he’d miss seeing Joanna off for.

He stared at the little colored time blocks, blinking away the sting in his eyes. Sucked in a breath and tried to focus on exactly how much he’d hate the way none of his classes lined up in a neat series. How he’d be forced to run around campus with weird half-hour gaps after every-other class that wouldn’t be long enough to get anything productive done.

As much as he’d bitched to Jim about taking intro classes with a bunch of teenagers, he was only in one required intro course. His other two courses were supplementary medical classes; an extended medical ethics to handle situations specific to Starfleet and the first in a series of xeno-anatomy that he never really got that much practice with before.

When Jim finally shouldered the door open and came inside, Leonard looked up to catch the slightly guilty expression on Jim’s face as he toed off his shoes. The kid looked like he was going to bolt and retreat into the bedroom at any second, despite the fact that it was barely late at all.

“Jim.”

“Hm” Jim didn’t make eye contact as he bent down to move his shoes out of the entryway so no one would go tripping on them.

“I put myself down as your emergency contact.” Leonard watched Jim’s face carefully, but it didn’t change. “I just thought you should know.”

“Ok” Jim started walking past the living room.

“Oh, for the love of- would you just sit down?” Leonard grabbed Jim by the arm and manhandled him onto the couch. He pulled a little too hard because Jim was putting up way less resistance than he expected and Jim landed practically in his lap. Leonard didn’t make any moves to maneuver Jim further away though. Somehow that felt like losing, and he knew that if he gave Jim an inch on this he’d take the mile.

Jim still wouldn’t look at him though. He bit his lip face angled towards the wall. The stubborn brat.

“Look at me.” Leonard was two seconds from grabbing Jim’s face in his hands and forcing his gaze, when Jim finally turned to meet his eye.

The piercing angry glare that fried Leonard’s insides and brain into gobbledegook should not have been as hot as it was. How the kid went from remorseful back to anger so fast Leonard would never understand. A flush of lightning ran down his body as Leonard tried to remember what it was that he meant to talk to Jim about. He opened his mouth and ended up addressing the issue at hand instead.

“We don’t have to talk about family, ok? Heck, I’d really rather not talk about my family either.”

“Sure.” Jim sneered and it wasn’t pretty. “Let’s not talk about how you didn’t tell me you have a daughter. That’s awfully convenient for you.”

Leonard flinched. Shit. He’d almost forgotten they hadn’t talked about that either. Jim must’ve known he’d hit a nerve because the steam deflated out of him as easily as he summoned it in the first place. He slumped forward resting his forehead against Leonard’s chest.

“It’s not even about that.” Jim let out a groan of frustration. “You can’t just make decisions for me. I don’t care if you’re my husband or a stranger off the street. If I say I don’t need an emergency contact then I don’t need an emergency contact. End of story.” A bit of his authority was leached out of the words by the way he talked straight to Leonard’s stomach.

Leonard wanted to grumble, wanted to complain about how this was exactly why he shouldn’t have been Jim’s doctor. Instead he clamped his mouth shut and ground his teeth together to resist the urge to pet Jim, to run his fingers through that gorgeous head of hair, to rub down into Jim’s scalp.

“I’m trying to look out for you, kid. Don’t you go around thinking that I would ever do anything to hurt you, you hear me. Forms don’t mean anything, what would it have hurt to put your mom’s name on it?”

Jim was silent and the longer the moment drug on the worse the churning in Leonard’s gut became. He had a bad feeling about this. Jim was wrong, this _was_ about his issues with his family. Nobody should have that bad of a reaction to a stupid electronic form. The worst sorts of feelings those things were supposed to inspire were mild irritation and a lifelong hatred for bureaucracy.

“Your mom hasn’t ever…,“ Leonard hesitated. Didn’t want to say it.

Jim let out a strangled half-laugh and shook his head but didn’t answer the question Leonard didn’t manage to finish. “Put her name on it or leave it blank, she wouldn’t show up either way. It doesn’t matter.”

Leonard sucked in a deep steadying breath and tried to loosen his fingers from the automatic curl of a fist. Because it did matter. And the solid conviction that Jim had said that with could only come from experience. It mattered because not having anyone at your side when you needed them hurt but knowing that someone could have been there and they deliberately chose not to come hurt so much crueler.

Leonard didn’t know what to say to that. All he thought was, ‘I’ll always be there for you’, over and over on repeat, but he couldn’t move his lips to speak.

They sat in a tense silence for a few minutes and if anybody won this little argument of theirs it was definitely Jim. But when Jim pulled back from Leonard he didn’t look like a winner. He looked drained. Jim shifted around to the other end of the couch and he propped his feet up in Leonard’s lap. Leonard didn’t swat them away because he was too busy being grateful Jim wasn’t running away to the bedroom.

That was when he remembered what he actually wanted to talk to Jim about. “Medical gave me the shift schedule that I’ll be working on for the rest of the semester.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m on evenings. All my classes are afternoons, so I’ll be coming to bed late and sleeping late in the mornings.”

“Should be fine. I can be a heavy sleeper when I want to be.”


	4. Chapter 4

Jim didn’t hesitate when he walked to his first class. He strode with purpose, he smiled at random passerby. He knew exactly where the building was located. The rooms were ordered ascending numerically, odds on the left and evens on the right side of the hall. So, he wouldn’t have a problem finding the room.

The only thing he didn’t know was how early he was supposed to show up. Did they go by that whole ‘early is on time, on time is late’ schtick? The previous class vacated the room a full twenty minutes before his was supposed to start, and that seemed like way too long a time to sit around in an empty classroom. It wasn’t like high school with a set passing period and an intricate series of warning and late bells to remind Jim exactly how tardy he was going to be. Was there an etiquette for these things? He’d never actually cared this much about school before.

The corridors were filled with cadets. Just a few days ago campus had been almost deserted, but this morning it was like a new school of tropical fish had descended on an empty reef. The bright colors of standard issue uniforms popped against the beige walls of the buildings making it impossible not to notice all the people. They moved in packs. Sometimes twos or threes. Outside on the quad the groups were larger, clusters of friends catching up from the long break period between semesters.

Jim had the most inane urge to clutch a backpack strap over his shoulder. A habit forged from years of repetition, but he hadn’t brought a backpack from Iowa. And even if he had, it looked like no one used them anyways. He wasn’t sure where these people kept all their stuff. Sure, a small PADD could fit in a back pocket, but there _had_ to be more that went into being prepared for higher learning. Right?

There were a few people already seated when Jim entered the classroom. He’d been worried again that someone would notice something not quite right with him. This was an upper level class, so he guessed he was actually closer in age to most of the cadets in the room now than the majority of cadets he’d seen in the halls. Theoretically, that should mean he would look less out of place. No one glanced at him twice.

The décor in the room felt old, as if the budget for new classroom furniture had been last fulfilled half a century ago. Jim dropped into a chair towards the back. The familiar squeak of protest at the added load calmed Jim like nothing else had this morning. Chairs were still chairs. The worst thing that could happen today would be a professor asking him a question he didn’t know the answer to and him looking like an idiot. That would be fine, he was used to people underestimating him.

People slowly trickled into the room. Five minutes before the start of class the stragglers had mostly let up. Professor Vestra appeared, harried, with a single minute to spare. Briefly pausing to set a messenger bag on the instructor’s desk, he dimmed the lights for contrast. It took him three tries to find a pen on the tray that had batteries that weren’t dead and would sync with the view-board well enough for him to write his name and the class title before he turned to face the room and immediately launched into an overview of the syllabus.

“Tests will account for forty percent of your grade. This should mean that without passing the midterm and final evaluations you may still pass by doing well in other areas of the class. That said, it would be extremely difficult to do so. I’m not expecting to fail any of you. This class is not meant to weed you out, but if you do not put in the time and effort required to learn the material I will not hesitate to fail you.”

Jim tensed in his seat. Half of his body wanted to slouch out of notice and the other half pulled conflictingly to sit up straight and at attention. He ended up remaining right where he was.

“You can read the syllabus for the rest of the grading structure, assigned textbook chapters, and lecture schedule. I’m not the type of professor who will insult your intelligence and waste your time by reading it for you.”

A series of hands shot in the air when it seemed like the professor was going to move on to the start of the class material. But Professor Vestra waved an arm as if to dismiss them, “If you have any questions, you can come find me at my office hours.” He sent a pointed look at the class. “The location of my office and my availability are also listed on the syllabus.”

Then the man started narrating as he wrote a seemingly endless list of equations on the board. Symbols and glyphs flowed onto the board, one after the other after the other. All related, they were a series of steps in a proof of the waveform of gravitational field oscillations.

Jim followed along just fine, which surprised him, though thinking back he wasn’t entirely sure why. This may have been some upper-level course he wasn’t technically qualified for, but Jim wasn’t an idiot. They were speaking Standard. It was easy to understand when the concepts were explained at a steady even pace.  
  
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It took Jim all of a week for the sense that he was meant to be doing something else to return with a passion. Granted, the two ten-page essays he’d completed in the last six days had not helped the feeling.

God, this was all just busywork. They made you spend ten percent of your time learning important ethical conundrums and life-saving tactical techniques and the other ninety percent of the time making you prove you understood it by repeating it in flowery language with introduction, elaboration, and conclusion. Like the ability to structure an essay would help you in the field when someone was relying on your decision-making capabilities.

Jim thought this vague existential angst might have been lessened if he found some level of connection with any of his fellow cadets besides Bones. Today’s lunch associates seemed like they were going to end up as yet another strike out in the search for people he would actually want to seek out for a repeat interaction. If his streak kept on like this, he might need to branch out and join a club or something.

The group at the table was attempting to console a lean brunette with a pixie-cut that her first grade of an eighty-seven wouldn’t kill her shot at ever making it to an officer’s rank. Jim didn’t remember her name; he had stopped trying to put names to faces after the third day of having to find a new circle of temporary acquaintances to sit with.

“You have to get two nominations from ranking officers in order to be allowed into the officer’s advanced field training.” The tall guy with a snaggle-tooth said in a tone that wasn’t quite snide. It still had that veneer of haughty superiority, though. The rationale here was that grades didn’t matter as much as having connections.

“But how do you ever impress officers without excelling in class?” The pixie-haircut brunette countered.

“You could do really well in the regular required field training?” Pimples with a big nose offered; a bit unsure of his own answer. He seemed to be the only one there concerned with pixie-haircut’s well-being instead of treating the Academy’s grading and evaluation structure as an intellectual challenge they could solve if they worked it hard enough.

The more stocky guy with tanned muscular arms snorted. “Only way to stand out in field training is to do something dumb that could get you killed and come out fine on the other side. Then they’ll just end up questioning your decision-making process.”

“What do you think?” Pixie-haircut turned to Jim, who’d been purposefully silent throughout the exchange. She seemed to dislike leaving even one stone unturned on her quest for the answer of how to become an officer. “Is it even worth staying in Starfleet if I can’t get an officer’s position?”

Jim took his time chewing on his latest bite in order to make sure his face was calm and placid before answering, as diplomatically as he could manage. “Well, only twenty percent of Starfleet is made up of officers. I’m sure if you asked the other eighty percent, they’d tell you there’s more to being in Starfleet than their rank-title.”

Pixie-haircut pulled a face. She held her tongue, not saying what was really going through her mind.

“But you do want to be an officer don’t you?” Pixie-haircut finally asked. “Don’t you want to be the best?”

It was Jim’s turn to hold his tongue. Of course, he wanted to be the best. But being the best didn’t necessarily mean following the premise that the one and only path to success in Starfleet was to be an officer.

As if exceeding expectations outside of a position of power meant nothing. As if becoming an officer was the be-all end-all of earning respect and accomplishment.

These people were already _supposed_ to be the best. These were the people who Starfleet rejected him in favor of and they just didn’t see it. All they had was an entitled worldview in which everything came to them straightforward and easy if they followed all the steps in the right order: one, two, three, congrats you’re an officer.

Had no one ever told them that the world didn’t run on just grades and connections? Maybe they had a little more substance to their lives than Jim was giving them credit for. But if they did, they sure as shit weren’t showing it.

Apparently Jim had bought into the whole glory and patriotism myth that Starfleet perpetuated more than he’d originally thought. The image of a man Jim once knew passed through his thoughts; square jaw held high as a friendly smile stretched across his face. A representative of Starfleet who had somehow managed to convince him just through the virtue of existing, that officers had a little something called integrity, and character built with grit and determination to match.

At least the nobodies back in Iowa knew struggle. Even if all they ever did was stay in Iowa, they wouldn’t believe that someone who wrote down a number on an electronic document in some way decided their worth as a sentient being at the expense of everything else.

Beating these people at their own game was supposed to make Jim feel vindicated and righteous. But all Jim had was a bad taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the food he was eating and everything to do with his disgust at the ugly direction his thoughts had taken.

Jim’s own first essay had gotten exactly two marks on it. A grade of ninety-two circled at the top, and a single comment, ‘well done’ slanted at the bottom of the last page. He’d put in hours of work on that, and he’d gotten a whole two words of feedback?

If anyone was to blame, Jim would point the finger at the professors for starving their students of validation until they ended up playing these pointless games to regain some sense of self. But the professors weren’t at fault any more than the students were. The whole system was broken. No one could be expected to give time and mentorship to an entire class of two hundred cadets with only one under paid teaching assistant to help.

Pixie-haircut was still looking over at him expectantly. Jim couldn’t do this. He shouldn’t have come to the mess. He couldn’t handle listening to this anymore. It was Saturday, and he didn’t have the same time constraints that his class schedule boxed him in with during the rest of the week. He didn’t have to be here. The shorter walk back from the library was the only reason he was here at all. The legs of the chair squeaked against the tile floor as Jim stood and made excuses to leave.  
  
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Bones was cooking. Nothing complicated, just some baked potatoes from the looks of the spuds and fixings set out in front of him on the countertop. But it didn’t have to be fancy to be comfort food, and this was the first meal in days that would be homemade instead of replicated or mess hall fare.

“How many do you want?” Bones asked as he washed the dirt and debris off the potato skins in the sink. There was no question Jim would be joining him for food. Meals together had become their thing. The only time of day that overlapped in their schedules during the week was dinner, when Jim was almost entirely done with his day and Bones was taking a quick break between classes and his evening shift.

Jim wasn’t that hungry and it wasn’t because he already ate. “Just one.”

Jim hovered over him in the kitchen despite the fact that there was nothing the man could possibly need help with after he settled the rack back into place and shut the oven door.

Bones was wiping his hands down with a towel when he said, “Out with it.”

“What?”

“What?” Bones huffed, leaning backward into the edge of the countertop. “The man asks, ‘what?’ That’s exactly what I’m asking you, you numbskull. What’s got you just standing there like a lump?”

Jim cracked his knuckles together. “I think I’m going to drop out.”

“No. Nope, I forbid it. You are not leaving me to suffer through this alone.” Bones vetoed instantly.

Jim shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

Bones growled out, “You can’t be failing already, it’s only been a week.”

“That’s not it.”

This was the moment where he should tell Bones the truth. That he’d lied to him and that he wasn’t actually a cadet. That he was very sorry, but they could get a divorce or an annulment or whatever else paperwork they needed and Bones would never have to see him again. This was the moment where it still wasn’t too late to back out.

“I’m never going to make captain.” Jim said instead. Hearing all that talk of advancement into the upper echelons of Starfleet had been a slap in the face of a reminder of the fact.

Fuck. He wasn’t ever supposed to get caught up in the fantasy of becoming a Starfleet captain. This was all just supposed to be about a laugh to show that he could do it. He was supposed to make them want him and then reject _them_ in some sort of turnabout karma. Something in Jim’s gut said that at the end of it Jim wouldn’t be laughing.

Even when Jim finished ‘taking’ all the classes he had planned to at the Academy, there was still no future here. They wouldn’t just take a look at his record, clap him on the back, and then give him a Starship. They wouldn’t even give him an assignment; more likely they’d give him a court date for fraud and impersonating Starfleet personnel.

Bones scowled and it wasn’t Jim’s favorite tolerating exasperation scowl, this one looked genuinely disappointed and fed up with Jim’s antics.

“Don’t say that.” Bones whapped him with the hand towel.

“It’s true!” Jim waved his hands around uselessly. “It doesn’t matter how many advanced classes I take. All the placement decisions are still left up to the top brass and they’re never going to pick me. It’d be easier to steal a ship and become a space-pirate captain than land a position as a Starfleet captain.”

“So, this is about the politics now? I’m still not seeing the problem. You’re probably three times better at dealing with people than I am. You think they’re not going to try and put me in an officer’s post?”

“That’s different. They wanted you here to begin with.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not an option to them. Whatever lists they put together for the best officer candidates won’t even have my name on them.” Jim started to walk away. Out of the kitchen, away from his failures. The one thing he’d never failed at was running away.

Bones blocked his path. “You can’t know that, not unless you’ve got some kind of psychic voodoo powers you’ve neglected to tell me about that let you see the future. It’s too early to give up.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence but it won’t change anything.” Jim put his hands on Bones’ chest, prepared to shove him out of the way.

“Then what’s it going to take?”

Jim raised his voice. “I already told you there’s nothing- “

“No! Not what it’s going to take to get you to captain. What’s it going to take to keep you here?” His booming voice raised to match Jim’s shout. Bones put his hands on Jim’s shoulders, keeping him in place. “If you won’t stay and try for the captain’s spot won’t you at least stay for me?”

Bones shook him by the shoulders. One hand slid down and yanked at the chain dipping down into Jim’s shirt. “You see this?” He wrapped the chain around his hand, the pointer finger slipping just under the lip of the ring it held. Bones’ voice rattled at the surrounding air like crushed gravel. “This is not just any hunk of metal. This means something. We. Are. In. This. Together. And you don’t get to just run out and quit on me when it gets tough.”

Bones was panting hot air right into Jim’s face, they stood so close. Jim could see the subtle shift of colors radiating around in the rings of hazel of his eyes.

Jim cleared his throat, brought his hands up to loosen the tight hold Bones’ fingers made on the chain around his neck. “Bones,” he said quietly. He felt the faint invisible tremors running through Bones’ hand as he worked his own fingers into the grip.

“Just,” Bones’ voice cracked and he tried again, “We just gotta get through the Academy together and if they don’t make you a captain, we’ll desert and I’ll follow you on your goddamn stolen space-pirate ship. Alright?”

“Alright.” And Jim stayed. Not for the vindictive laugh he’d thought he’d get when he beat Starfleet at their own game. Not for the dream of sailing across the stars. He stayed for Bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small disclaimer here that the not-so-subtle opinions of higher education expressed in this work do not necessarily represent all educators or institutions. And there is nothing inherently wrong with being a type-A personality who wants to do their best at everything. At times I have also been that kind of student who triple checks work obsessively to make sure you get *all* the points possible on an assignment.


	5. Chapter 5

Leonard had learned early on that there were certain things in this life that you had to fix immediately, and others that you could let simmer in discontent at the back of your mind for years without any outward problems.

The first time his Daddy had up and left in the middle of a fine homecooked meal, he’d glanced over at his Momma in confusion. The strip steak was, if not his Daddy’s favorite food, at least in the top five. And there was absolutely zero tolerance for rude behavior at the dinner table.

You were expected to be grateful and gracious for the food set before you, even when the overcooked meat came out as hard and dry as a brick. Any words indicating such sentiments were met with a glare and the question, “Would you like to cook for us tomorrow instead, Leonard?”

To which Leonard would always reply, “No, Momma.” And leave it at that.

He’d expected Momma to be preparing to give Daddy the dressing down of his lifetime for getting up without so much as a by-your-leave. But when he glanced over, his Momma was calm. When she’d noticed him looking she’d told him, “Eat your greens.” Then she’d reached for the serving spoon and doubled up the asparagus on his plate.

The next day, he’d learned his Daddy had saved a man’s arm from having to be amputated after a nasty shuttle accident. Momma had made Daddy’s number one favorite meal, a shepherd’s pie, for dinner that night. The crust was soft and flaky, and Leonard could not have found a complaint with it if he’d tried.

That was the first taste Leonard got at the concept of priorities. At assessing the consequences and immediacy of each possible outcome and letting the results of your analysis decide your actions. It wasn’t the last taste of priorities he’d get, not by a longshot.

Priorities, and triage as he’d later learn in med school, were the reason why he made himself eat real, regular meals at designated mealtimes, and the reason he hardly ever did the dishes immediately afterwards. A stack of plates in the sink wasn’t gonna kill anybody, but letting his mind go from sharp to groggy due to meal-skipping sure could.

Priorities were how he’d known that even when his personal life fell through the crapshoot, he couldn’t stew on the mess in his mind, heart, and soul and let it affect his career as well. If being a doctor was the only thing he was good for, he couldn’t let that fall down the crapshoot too.

He’d needed to get as far away from the ex and the well-meaning sympathetic condolences of acquaintances who thought they knew what he was going through as fast as possible. Otherwise soon enough he would’ve been struggling to maintain enough sanity to make it through his shifts. The bottom of the bottle was not a coping mechanism you could afford to have when you had to be up and sober in eight hours to take apart and remake somebody’s spine. Sobriety hypo dependencies were no joke.

His lifestyle was not sustainable. He needed to get away while he still had a career to salvage. The irony was that he had to quit his job in order to save his career. Some of his colleagues would have put in recommendations and references for him at hospitals out of state if he’d asked. But the hiring process was long, tedious, and complicated. By comparison, Starfleet recruitment was not.

It was all in the practice of triage. Apply pressure to the worst of the wounds to stop from bleeding out and slap a bandage on it before moving on to the lesser hurts.

If asked, he’d claim that it was triage that made him yell at Jim to stay for him. To stay with him. Jim was the bandage that held together the worst of his hurts. You can’t just go ripping that bandage off before the blood in the wound has even finished clotting.

If he was being honest, he’d have told you he’d had entirely too much emotional investment for it to have even classified as an act of triage. A decision required enough detachment for clear and rational thinking. Triage required a decision to exist in the first place. There was no decision. No path existed in Leonard’s mind that would have let Jim leave without fighting for him tooth and nail.

Priorities, he reminded himself were why he checked his comm messages only twice a day and kept a separate channel specifically for emergencies. Of the stuff in the regular comm inbox, a good three quarters went straight in the trash before he even finished reading the subject line. If a man read every word that got sent to him from junk mail, he’d spend three lifetimes cleaning out his inbox.

That’s why he didn’t immediately recognize the twice-forwarded real paper envelope that Jim held up in his hands. Though, when his mind finally took in the embossed acronym of a logo next to the return address, he categorized it as trash.

“What is this?” Jim waved the envelope under his nose.

“Trash.” Leonard motioned towards the waste container holding all the other junk he’d deemed as trash. They were sorting through the backlog of stuff he’d been forwarded once the relevant delivery services had updated his new mailing address.

Some of it was old knick-knacks he’d neglected to take home from his office at the hospital. He’d taken the framed diplomas off the walls, all the spare sets of clothes from his locker, and his best whiskey from the bottom desk drawer. But he’d somehow managed to entirely forget the set of shelves affixed to the wall behind his desk. It wasn’t like he ever looked at the damn things. They’d been in the complete opposite direction of his line of sight while working.

Then there were the boxes his mom had sent him. And the couple boxes of stuff that he’d left when moving out of the house he’d shared with Jocelyn. He hadn’t touched those ones yet.

Like most of the packages and parcels taking up space on the dining table, the envelope Jim was holding had two previous forwarding addresses stamped on it. The first was for a dingy studio apartment that he’d gotten short term when he first separated. The second was the address to his parent’s house, where his mother insisted he move in once she’d caught wind of the separation.

“No, they don’t pay for real paper unless it’s important.” Jim mused, holding the envelope up to the light as if it would help him see through it. The paper was too expensive and thick for that strategy to be effective. “Weddings, baby showers, or graduation announcements, sure. But this doesn’t look like any of those.”

Because it wasn’t. This letter was from some puffed-up medical society who put on extravagant events instead of doing real work, like saving people’s lives. Leonard was fine with a nice night out and an open bar every once in a while, if it was for a good cause, like a charity fundraiser.

This society didn’t do any of those. They just hosted annual awards. Collected talented and famous doctors to dress up and have dance about like trained monkeys. Another plaque to join his collection of junk office knick-knacks was really not what Leonard needed in his life at the moment.

There was the sound of paper ripping, and then Jim exclaiming, “You’ve been nominated for an award for excellence in new surgical innovations – subcategory neurosurgery!”

Which Leonard already knew, from the first comm message. That was the only one he actually read. The next ten messages on the same matter had been immediately deleted.

“It’s a felony to open other people’s mail.” Leonard said. He tossed a commemorative ribbon announcing him the winner of the three-legged race at the Neurosurgery Department’s Annual Staff Picnic circa 2252 into the trash bin. Jocelyn might’ve been a cold-hearted bitch, but that had translated into an aggressive energy that could not be beat on the race course.

Jim rolled his eyes. “You think that still applies to married people?” He flipped past the fancifully calligraphed front of the card, eyes skipping down the details held inside.

“You can’t just not go.” Jim said. “What if you win and you’re not there to accept the award?”

“Then I win and I’m not there to accept the award.” It was a simple enough concept. Leonard slid a new box across the tabletop and started tugging the top open. They must’ve sealed these things with something industrial grade.

“Just imagine how bad that would make the other nominees feel. They’d think you were snubbing them or something.”

“Maybe I am snubbing them.” Leonard huffed and yanked, and the lid on the box flew open. Thankfully none of the contents except two sheets of packing foam came flying out.

Jim was quiet at that. But he didn’t set the card down, and he didn’t start helping Leonard unpack the boxes again. He flipped the card face open and closed a few times, looking off in the distance.

“No one will be offended that I’m not there. People skip these kinds of thing all the time. Commitments come up. Life happens.” Leonard said and grabbed the card out of Jim’s hand to dump it in the trash bin.

Jim dropped the subject then and Leonard had thought that had been the end of it. He was wrong.

Hours later he sat in the home office. Old knick-knacks in new spots made it feel so familiar it was like his old office had been reincarnated. On his second daily inbox purge he found the new message, ‘Confirmation of RSVP for Dr. Leonard H. McCoy and +1 to MISAA (Medical Innovations Society Annual Awards)’.

“Dammit, Jim!” He threw his hands up in the air in frustration.

But Jim wasn’t home, he’d taken off for the library after they’d finished up lugging all the empty boxes and the contents of the trash bin out to the building’s recycler. He’d practically pushed Leonard into taking over the office space, saying he liked the atmosphere at the library better anyways.

At the time, Leonard had been somewhat grateful he could have a little space of his own to close the door on. Now, Leonard wanted Jim back right that second so he could cuss him out properly and get a good grip for a stranglehold.

Leonard fumed silently, pushing angrily at the delete button for the rest of his inbox purge.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
Jim’s whole life was a series of might’ve beens. What might’ve been if his Dad was still alive. What might’ve been if Sam never left. What might’ve been if his Mom actually cared. What might’ve been if he hadn’t gone to Tarsus, hadn’t met Chris. Hadn’t left Chris.

So many wasted opportunities. So much wasted potential. And yeah, a lot of that was out of Jim’s control. There was enough, though, that Jim had managed to fuck up all on his own. There was the dumb shit, like driving a car off the edge of a ravine. But the dumb shit didn’t really bother him as much as the way he’d just accepted the passing semblance of a life cobbled together from making do with crappy situation after crappy situation.

He didn’t want that for Bones. He refused to let Bones wallow about, just passing up opportunities.

Jim was finally taking control of his own life. He was turning what might’ve been if Starfleet accepted him into what was when Jim took the Academy by storm.

A frivolous party invitation might seem like nothing now. But wasn’t life just made up of a series of frivolous and inconsequential events pieced together until the whole was greater than the sum of its parts?

Jim twirled his wedding band on its chain in a newly acquired habit. He let his eyes float back to the top of the same passage of text he’d been attempting to read for the twentieth time.

Jim imagined the future. The far-far distant future. When he was old and the arthritis kicked in so bad, not even the best of modern medicine could fix it. Bones was there, in that future. The two of them sat in a porch swing out on a veranda during a stifling muggy summer night. They’d look up at the stars. Point out all the places they’d been. Laugh. Reminisce about all the dumb shit Jim managed to talk Bones into.

Jim wanted that future. Wanted it so bad he could practically taste the way his sweat would roll down the skin of his forehead, past his cheek, a salty droplet catching at the corner of his mouth.

He didn’t want to wake up one day, roll over, joints popping in pain, only to realize he was old and he’d never done the extravagant frivolous shit. Didn’t want to get through his whole life only to realize he’d never really lived.

Jim wanted the ridiculous memories. He wanted the over-the-top stories, told, and re-told so many times that the exaggerations reached mythic levels of proportion. He wanted the dastardly deeds and heroic triumphs. Jim wanted to live and he wanted Bones right there beside him.

This gala would be frivolous. It would be extravagant and unproductive. In Bones’ words it would be a complete waste of time. If Jim had his way, it would also be the start of their many, many new memories in the making.

Jim floated his eyes back to the top of the reading for the twenty-first time. He needed to focus if he was going to finish the reading sometime that night. Just because his motivations had changed, didn’t mean that he was about to start slacking on his studies. If anything, he would do more, do better because he was doing this for Bones.

Attempt number twenty-one was a bust because a minute later, Jim heard the sounds of a girl crying from somewhere in the library. Jim sat up in his seat on the ergonomic study chair that somehow still managed to be uncomfortable. If his ears were capable of perking up they would’ve been.

The sounds were somewhat muffled by the noise-dampening foam blocks attached to the walls in this section of the stacks that was designated as a ‘quiet’ study zone. But Jim could still hear her stifled hiccupping sobs.

He was torn. Never would Jim leave someone to suffer, but he also knew how hard it was to have someone bear witness your pain. Being seen so vulnerable could rip you open and cleanse away your hurts just as easily as it could tear you to shreds.

He didn’t think on it long, his feet made the decision for him. The sobs trailed off as he checked down each and every aisle in the direction he thought he’d heard the sounds coming from. It was surprisingly hard to track her down, given the number of nooks and crannies the library liked to tuck semi-private study spots away into.

Finally, he found her, hunched over a table, the detritus of a marathon study session laid out in a way that suggested at one point it had an organization scheme, but no longer.

“Hey.”

The girl jumped, startled. Obviously having missed Jim’s approach.

She sniffed when she looked up. Her dark hair hung limp into her face. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I was trying to be – hic – quiet.”

“No. No. It’s fine. I just wanted to make sure you were ok.” Jim approached a bit closer to the table. Slowly, as if she were a wounded animal.

“I- I should be fine. I don’t-” The girl started, but her face betrayed her, crumpling under some unseen weight of anguish. Jim didn’t leave, waited patiently while another round of hiccupping sobs raged through her body.

“Shhh, Shhh. You’re ok. You’re going to be just fine.” Jim pulled her into his arms and rubbed soothing circles between her shoulder blades. A ragged intake of air was all she managed before another sob shook through her body and she tucked her face into Jim’s chest. Hands curled into the extra fabric of Jim’s shirt.

It could have been seconds. It could have been minutes. It was timeless in that moment in the corner of the library with no windows to let in light from the sun and only the fluorescent hum of the lamps overhead dully illuminating the scene.

“Hic- It’s just such a stupid thing to get upset over.” She finally pulled back from Jim, seeming somewhat more together.

“I think that whatever it is, if you’re that upset, then it’s probably a pretty good reason to get upset.” Jim reasoned.

“It’s not like anyone died.” The girl dug around in her bag for a packet of tissues and blew into one loudly.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

She flipped over a PADD that was front and center on the tabletop and slowly slid it across for Jim to see. “Everybody at home. They’re all expecting me to do great things here. But I’m obviously not cut out for it.”

Jim looked down at the screen and saw the red failing grade of a 32 marked at the top of the Starfleet system’s gradebook.

“This doesn’t mean you can’t do great things. Sometimes it takes a little more work, but this just means you have room for improvement.” Jim tried to instill as much calm and confidence as he could into his tone. He still felt like a fraud, it wasn’t like Jim had ever actually achieved great things. Bones was up for an award for excellence! By comparison, Jim had done nothing.

She shook her head, more silent tears slowly leaking down her cheeks. “Sometimes I think I’m doing it on purpose. Like what’s that called?” Her eyes looked up inquisitively as if the answer would fall down from the ceiling of the library. “Self-sabotage.”

“You wanted to fail?”

“Well not when you put it like that!” And Jim was slightly relieved to see the energy light up her features. “This place. Starfleet. The Academy. I had this idea in my head, you know. Of what it was going to be like when I got here and what great things I would be doing.”

“And it’s not like what you thought it would be?” Jim finished.

“Not even close.” She smiled bitterly before blowing out a breath. “And it’s driving me crazy because I can’t tell if I’m failing because I hate it here. Or if I hate it here because I’m failing.”

“That is a tough one.” Jim really didn’t want to just leave her alone like this, in a state of distress. “Listen, why don’t we make you hate it here a little less and then we go from there?”

He was about to ask her back to the apartment before remembering Bones and the gala confirmation. A big blow-up argument didn’t seem like something she needed, as much as Jim thought getting her out of the library would do wonders for her mood. “Can I walk you home? Studying any more like this won’t be productive. And if you want, we can do dinner tomorrow? Food shared with a friend is always a good pick-me-up when you’re feeling down.”

“You want to get dinner with me?” She was slightly disbelieving.

“Yeah. Is that alright?” Jim wanted to give her something to look forward to. Something in the future that wasn’t a vast endless expanse of anxiety around expectations, assignments, and grades.

She smiled, a real smile, ever so hesitantly. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. It’s just that I haven’t even really made any friends either.” She laughed and it was a nice light pleasant sound. “I thought I’d immediately become best friends with my roommate. Gah, such a cliché, right? That was just another one of those ideas in my head that didn’t come true.”

“Well, if you still want one, Jim Kirk, friend number one, is at your service.” Jim bowed in a mockery of servitude, pleased when it made her laugh again.

“Nice to meet you, Jim. I’m Alexa.”  
  
◦◦◦  
  
“What the hell were you thinking?” Leonard slammed the door to their bedroom closed purely for effect as he pushed right up into Jim’s space. “I told you I wasn’t going to go.”

“Today was the last day for the deadline to RSVP.” Jim pointed out as if that made any difference while he pulled off his red uniform top and replaced it with a t-shirt. Leonard mentally cursed the stupid mail and its stupid need to be physically delivered from place to place. If it hadn’t taken so long to be forwarded so many times, Leonard could have tossed the damn invitation before Jim ever got his scheming hands on it.

“And that has any bearing on me wanting to go, how?” Leonard knew that Jim could not miss the disbelieving expression on his face. Because there was absolutely no way he was changing his mind on this.

Jim held his ground, casually re-opening the bedroom door with a grace that seemed mocking to Leonard. “The event is being held here, in San Francisco. Don’t you think that’s like fate telling you, you should go? There’s no travel. All you have to do is show up for a couple hours, clap politely and leave.”

Leonard trailed Jim back out into the main room. “And dress up in a penguin suit. And make small talk.” The words ‘small talk’ came out scathingly disgusted.

“I think they’d accept the Starfleet dress uniform, if that makes you feel any better.” As he made the consolation, a strange expression passed across his face. Jim’s eyes cast a glance back to the closet where their dress uniforms hung, and his brow furrowed together.

“No! It does not make feel any better. We are not going.” Leonard would put his metaphorical foot down.

“Yes. We are.” Jim said and it didn’t look like there was anything that could change his mind. Dammit.

It was a stalemate.

“We’re having salad for dinner.” Leonard said, his eyes daring Jim to contradict him. And if this was the best punishment he could come up with for Jim, he refused to believe that it was pathetic.

“Oh, come on! At least tell me it’s pasta salad.”

Leonard was not soft to Jim’s wounded expression. He was not.

He made the pasta salad.  
  
◦◦◦  
  
Jim was pleased as punch. He’d finally turned some unseen corner and new friends were just popping out of the woodwork. First Alexa in the library yesterday. Then today, at lunch, he’d had his first success picking a table at random in the mess and introducing himself to the occupants. Gaila was an absolute riot.

“Noooo! You didn’t? Did you?” Jim half-laughed into his sandwich, riveted by the enthralling story Gaila was telling him.

“Well, when I said that the -“ Gaila started, only to be cut off by a tray slamming down into the table across from Jim with an empty metallic clang.

“I cannot believe you, Kirk!” Uhura seethed.

Jim swallowed. “Um, what?” He eyed her up and down in search of the source of her anger.

“Really? Going to play dumb?” Uhura’s eyes were daggers, and Jim tried to be as subtle as possible when leaning away from her and all that ‘I’m going to kill you’ energy. “I saw you yesterday.”

Jim spoke slowly, “What, exactly, did you see me doing yesterday?”

“Picking up crying girls from the library? Classy. Real classy.”

Jim was glad he had swallowed, because otherwise he would have been choking half to death at the absurdity of that statement.

His first thought was denial. His mouth opened to say words. Something like ‘I’m married’ came to mind before he immediately rejected it. No way Uhura would believe he was married, even if it was the truth. Not after he’d tried flirting with her in Riverside. In the best case scenario with that line of argument her opinion of him would go down for being an adulterous jerk.

He didn’t think explaining the whole ‘got married on a whim on his first day here’ thing would help much either.

“Sex can be very therapeutic.” Gaila interjected. The show of support was nice, but very much not the direction Jim wanted this conversation to take.

“I didn’t – I wouldn’t.” Jim managed to get out.

“The endorphins that orgasms release can alter your brain chemistry enough to improve your mood.” Gaila continued, pausing to lick sauce off of each of her fingers. “At least, temporarily.”

Jim desperately tried to change the subject. “So, you two. You know each other?” The words were so stilted and awkward.

“Roommates.” Was Uhura’s stiff-lipped reply.

“And friends.” Gaila said, smiling. “When she decides she can put up with me.”

“Seriously! Even with your reputation, I didn’t think you had it in you to take advantage of someone’s emotional state.” Uhura circled back around to her accusations.

“I didn’t take advantage of Alexa! I swear! She seemed like she needed a friendly shoulder to cry on.” Jim was about to ask Uhura why she didn’t comfort the obviously distressed crying girl if she’d been close enough in the library to witness the scene, when he realized. “Wait. What do you mean ‘my reputation’?”

Uhura backed off a bit at Jim’s emphatic reply, but she still wasn’t quite in the category of ally. She looked at Jim skeptically. “You sit with a different table every day. Don’t you do know what that looks like?”

“Like I’m being nice and introducing myself?” Jim tried.

Uhura just stared at him.

No. They couldn’t seriously believe-. You couldn’t make a reputation just from that could you? This had to be all in Uhura’s head. Nobody else would think that.

At Jim’s stunned expression, Uhura went on for the kill, “It looks like you’re trolling for your next hookup.”

Jim’s mood turned so fast, he almost wished he was hooking up with someone for some of those mood-lifting endorphins Gaila was on about.

It wasn’t just in Uhura’s mind. Turned out tons of people did think just that about Jim Kirk. There was some unspoken rule that everyone sat at the same tables every day, maintaining the hierarchies of the various groups. A silent politics by which the rumor mill tracked the ebbs and flows of breakups and makeups, and the who’s who of Starfleet. A rulebook that Jim had been entirely ignorant of.

It seemed so high school. Not that Jim ever really cared about high school politics. But at least in high school, he had been _aware_ of the politics.

He would have thought the average cadet was more emotionally mature than that. It was so petty. And obvious now that he looked for it. He really ought to have noticed. But when he changed seats every day, his perspective changed too. It looked like people were sitting in different places, but only because he had moved.

Somehow, without Jim having tried to, without a single hookup, while freaking _married_ , Jim had managed to gain a reputation as the Academy’s resident man-slut. Jim felt a sinking sense of dread fill him. How was he going to explain this to Bones?

Jim sat at Gaila and Uhura’s table for lunch from then on. He was convinced Uhura thought he was hooking up with Gaila behind her back, but in this situation, he figured that was the lesser of two evils.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do read and appreciate all of your comments and kudos! I'm a bit of lurker though so I don't usually reply to comments or leave a lot of author's notes. This fic is mostly for my own enjoyment/writing practice but I am glad you all are enjoying it!
> 
> I also don't want to spoil any of the plot, but after the last chapter I do want to say that Uhura will be back. She will be portrayed with a little more depth. It might take a while since she's not a major part of the plot, which is why she isn't tagged. If it seemed like that confrontation kind of came out of nowhere, it was intentionally written that way, since to Jim, it also kind of came out of nowhere. Jim and Uhura really haven't had much chance to interact at this point, and seen from Uhura's perspective Jim's actions were kind of douchey.
> 
> Minor content warnings on this chapter:  
> \- more mild mentions of Tarsus  
> \- a lot of food porn so I apologize if you are stuck in your apartment/house somewhere during quarantine and have a new unsatisfiable food craving after reading

Jim tried to maintain a certain amount of presence when he was with people. It was a consideration that was rarely made to him, so he knew how much the gesture could be appreciated. Jim made eye contact. He focused his attention. Listened. Followed body language and reacted in accordance.

Alexa was twisting her fingers nervously at the metallic buckle on the strap of her over-the-shoulder bag as they strolled down the sidewalk. Jim recognized it easily because he had similar habits.

Unsure and awkward. That’s what Jim’s mind read the action as. She was probably embarrassed about how she had dissolved into a blubbering mess yesterday, now that she’d had a good night’s sleep to ruminate on it.

Jim would’ve usually gone in with a smile and a disarming joke to put her at ease. But, could that be misconstrued as too flirty?

He’d never thought of his natural charm as a bad thing before. Cops who otherwise thought of him as cocky and arrogant cracked smiles at his crude remarks. Bartenders gave him acknowledging nods when he closed out his tab after he flirted with half the bar and laid out drunk assholes in fights. The little old lady at the pharmacy counter in Riverside blushed when she filled his prescription for the one non-addictive pain med he wasn’t allergic to.

To say that this one good thing about him – his ability to brighten someone’s day – was not so much of a good thing after all, well that felt like a personal attack.

Should he be re-evaluating the way he’d lived his whole life just because of what some people thought of him? So what if he was flirty? Who would Jim even be if he wasn’t?

Alexa’s hair was up today in a long fishtail braid that hung down past her shoulders. Both of them were out of uniform. Jim in a standard-for-him grey t-shirt, jeans, and leather jacket. By contrast, Alexa was wearing a bright orange-dyed denim overall jumpsuit on top of a plain white shirt.

“What are you feeling like? I heard there’s a good Indian place two blocks that way.” Jim pointed to his left and tried not to second-guess himself when he smiled at her. That was firmly in the category of friendly, right?

Alexa’s gaze followed Jim’s hand before snapping back to the side to survey the stream of storefronts as they went by. They’d already passed a half dozen or so restaurants.

Two separate establishments named ‘Gyro King’ that probably weren’t a chain considering one had a yellow awning with red lettering and the other had a green awning. Though, both of their combo plates were priced the same at eight credits, based on the menus posted in the windows.

There was a pizza joint that had the most amazing grease smells wafting out of it. The Mexican place had view-screens up; a montage of tacos, taquitos, enchiladas, and burritos flickering by to titillate appetites. A swanky dimly lit space had a tiny patio out front with lanterns strung up and billed itself as Tellarite-Vietnamese fusion. Whatever that meant.

There were more restaurants of wider varieties on this one street than there were combined in all of Riverside.

Alexa looked back over at Jim. She stopped fiddling with the clasp and instead tightened her grip on the strap of her bag.

“Do you have any recommendations? I’m usually a hundred percent more decisive than this, but I haven’t tried any of these places.” Alexa gestured vaguely to all the shopfronts. “And I don’t trust reviews from people I don’t know.”

“You’re opinionated, huh?” Jim stuck his hands in his pants pockets. They passed a group clustered outside the entrance to an Italian restaurant, waiting for a table.

“I like what I like.” Alexa shot back.

Jim grinned and moved one hand from his pocket to rub at the back of his neck. “Well, I’m not much help for recommendations. The grocery store is the only place I can vouch for. But really, that was more a testament to the skill of the chef than the food itself.”

“You have a kitchen?” Alexa lit up at the possibility.

_B-rring. B-rring._

“Yeah, a whole apartment.” Jim started to explain.

“Look out!” Alexa shouted at him, gesticulating wildly, glancing over her shoulder.

“Wha-?” Jim’s whole world slowed as Alexa shoved him out of the way of an oncoming bicyclist.

He took in the cracks of the concrete as his shoes scuffed at the ground in movement. Heard the fluttering of the awnings in the mild wind whipping down the gap in the city skyline that the street allowed. His eyes swept over the mass of neon signs spattered across the buildings. There was a welcome bell ringing on a door as someone exited onto the street with takeout in hand. The air was damp and a touch cold against Jim’s exposed skin in a way that indicated the morning’s fog that rolled in off the ocean hadn’t totally dissipated.

He almost tripped into the street proper as they squeezed in between a street lamp and a parking meter. Then he saw the bicycle. A road bike with dropped handlebars that the rider was leaning bent forward over. It had a massive gearbox, which probably allowed well over two dozen speeds. The bicycle whizzed past them without slowing at a top speed that would have been much more appropriate on the street than the sidewalk.

Alexa was wide-eyed and flustered.

Jim laughed uncontrollably, finding it ridiculous he hadn’t been aware enough of his environment to avoid almost getting run over. Here he was, Jim Kirk, who prided himself as a self-proclaimed master of being present in the moment and he’d been too caught up in the notion that his personality was somehow wrong to keep diligent notice of his surroundings.

“It’s not funny! You could have been killed! I can’t believe how inconsiderate people are in this city.”

“Hey, hey, I’m fine. At the worst, it would’ve been some bruises if the guy had hit me.” Jim took off his jacket and shook it out to get rid of the dust transferred from where he’d brushed up against the lamp post. “It does kind of feel like the city’s way of saying ‘get off my streets’ though, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Alexa nodded, seeming to come to some kind of decision. “Ok, if you’re fine with offering up your kitchen we can pick up some stuff to cook with at your place.”

“Sounds good.” It really did. After the day he’d had – near bicycle collision and reputation revelation – hanging around at home sounded amazing.

◦◦◦

Even with a decisive personality, Jim wasn’t sure how Alexa managed to make any decisions at all about what they would have for dinner with the wide variety of food options available for purchase.

He held his basket by the handle in the crook of one arm in order to hold a different cheese in each hand. He brought each one up to his face to get a closer look at them. He tried sniffing them through the packaging but couldn’t really get a whiff.

Which kind of cheese were you supposed to use for fondue? Cheddar? Swiss? Monterey? Pepper Jack? Colby Jack? Could you mix and match? Did it even matter? Jim wasn’t picky with food. As long as he wasn’t allergic to it, he’d eat almost anything.

That’s why he’d initially wanted Alexa’s opinion on the restaurant and ultimately why he let her pick the meal they’d be preparing. As for fondue? Alexa’s reasoning had been:

“It has to be something we couldn’t have gotten at a restaurant. Otherwise what’s the point of cooking for ourselves? Plus, it has to be fun. Nothing is more fun than fondue.”

Jim put both the cheeses he was holding into the basket.

Alexa appeared next to him, her own basket laden with bounty, back from some other aisle.

“No, no, we are not buying Lighthouse brand cheese.” Alexa plucked the cheeses out of his basket and put them back on the shelf.

Jim looked at the cheeses again. They all had the same orange packaging with a black cartoonish lighthouse centered above the cheese name in bold-face type. Every single cheese was Lighthouse brand.

“Don’t we need cheese for fondue?” Jim questioned.

Alexa shifted her weight back and forth between her feet, swinging her basket with the movement. “We’ll have to make do with chocolate. My parents would disown me if they knew I bought Lighthouse brand cheese.”

Jim could feel his eyebrows practically lift off his face. “Are they who you got your opinionated nature from? They hold personal vendettas against all the grocery name-brands?”

Alexa snorted and started up the aisle again. Jim followed her. “No, not quite. My parents own a small dairy farm in Idaho. It’s been in our family for generations. Dad likes to say the reason we’ve lasted this long is ‘cause we stick it to corporations like Lighthouse.”

“Wow.” That was impressive, Jim knew how much upkeep a farm took. “My family used to farm corn in Iowa. Even at ninety percent automation, it was still a ton of work. After my uncle died we shut it down for good.” More like without Jim or Sam there to actually do the work, Frank had left crop to rot in the fields as Jim starved on Tarsus. Oh, the irony. The farm was pretty much sunk afterwards.

Alexa smiled and hip-bumped him, the movement hitting him more at mid-thigh because of their height difference. “A farm boy, eh? What are the chances the two of us country bumpkins found each other?”

◦◦◦

The apartment smelled like a candy shop; one of those ones with lollipops the size of your head and about six hundred flavors of salt-water taffy. But straight sugar never carried the same olfactory punch as chocolate. Jim leaned over the pot on the stove and inhaled deeply.

The rich cocoa aroma dug up a long-buried scent-memory of fresh fudge being poured over an ice cream sundae. The walls of the retro sweets-parlor he’d gotten that sundae from had been papered over with a diagonal red and white pin-stripe print above white shiplap paneling. Jim ate that sundae so fast his teeth ached at the cold.

Chris had smiled fondly at him from across the polished chrome circle of a table as Jim made a face in reaction to the cold.

“It’s not going anywhere, son. Take your time.” Chris said.

Jim stuck out his tongue in a childish display to match the childish theme of the whole outing before he stole a bite of Chris’ own sundae. Scraping his spoon along the edges of the flimsy cup to catch a melty bit before it crossed the barrier from ice-cream to just plain old cream for good.

Chris pushed the whole cup over towards Jim, relinquishing any claims on it. “Here, it’s yours.”

Jim suspected Chris never had any intention of eating it to begin with. He’d taken two bites in order to partake in the activity of eating with Jim, but then he’d sat back, content to watch Jim eat with gusto.

The fact that Chris had ordered the exact same plain sundae as Jim – vanilla ice cream, melted hot fudge, sliced bananas with no nuts – just reinforced the suspicion.

Jim ate it anyways, relishing in the variety and disparity of cool and hot; fruity, sticky, creamy, sweet, sweet, sweet. It was not even close to being on the list of carefully nutritionally balanced approved meal plan items. And Jim loved it.

By that point Jim had been off of the protein smoothie mixes for a while. He’d graduated to real food just under two months prior, so it was less about making sure he didn’t immediately upchuck his food and more about putting meat on his bones. Any calorie was a good calorie.

Chris glanced over at the huge line in front of the serving counter. “You ok taking that to go?”

“Go where?” Jim said past a mouthful of spoon. He really, really did not want to go back to being stuck in the apartment all weekend staring at the walls, wishing the vastness of Starfleet’s network had something new to entertain him.

“How’s a walk sound?” Chris asked and Jim would’ve thought he was just being considerate of all the other patrons in the busy shop waiting around for a table.

Except then on their walk, Chris kept taking some deliberately obtuse turns off of the main roads. Jim finished his appropriated ice cream halfway to wherever they were headed. And they were headed somewhere, Jim just wasn’t sure where yet.

“Is that the beach?” Jim asked, somewhat idiotically, when they’d rounded what Jim assumed was the last corner on their trek. They were running out of land. This had to be their destination.

“Yep.” Chris glanced over and grinned at the awed expression on Jim’s face. “You ever seen the Pacific?”

Jim shook his head, dumbstruck. Chris asked it like anyone else had ever cared enough to take Jim to the ocean. Jim had thought he would have gotten the chance to see it when he went off-world for the first time. But window seats on connecting shuttle flights sold at a premium, of course. The most Jim got was a sidelong glance of atmosphere and some unrecognizable strip of blue from the sliver of the observation window he could make out from his seat.

On the starship to Tarsus, the observation deck available to general passengers faced the stars. On the starship back, he’d still been too weak to leave the medical bay.

Jim recognized the look of the water crashing over the sand from numerous vids. But he never could have imagined the feel of the wind crashing into his face, whipping his shirt sleeves about, and the gritty briny smell that accompanied it.

Jim swallowed. “It’s my first time seeing any ocean.” Just like it was his first time at a beach. First time in a candy shop. First time eating ice cream that didn’t come out of a replicator with chunky inconsistencies that had your teeth crunching down into ice crystals. First time being called ‘son’. It was Firsts all the way down.

Chris looked him in the eye, no pity anywhere near his expression. “I’m glad you get to see it this way first. Part of the beauty is looking out at the horizon and knowing that there’s even more just beyond. I’ve seen it from space more times than I can count, but the view from the beach is still my favorite. Up there, where you can see it all end-to-end in one glance you lose the sense of how big it really is and how small you are in comparison.”

“Isn’t that how you feel looking at the stars?” Because that- that was the exact sensation Jim got every time he looked up into the night sky.

“Ah, I’d say its similar. But the ocean comes at you in waves and laps at your feet when you stand in it.” Chris chuckled. “As far as I know, there aren’t any stars that can do that. And if you ever find any, let me know. I’ve got a couple of buddies who’d be real interested in the physics of those stars.”

Jim had smiled, then he’d run across the beach, shucked his shoes, and stepped into the ocean for the first time.

Leaning back from the stove, Jim wished they had some non-replicated ice-cream right about now. Jim glanced over at Alexa who had a furrowed brow and concentrated expression as she stood chopping the tops off strawberries. Ah, well, it wasn’t too bad that they would miss out on the ice cream. Alexa had probably had real ice cream before she was a toddler if her family ran a dairy farm.

Fondue was another first for Jim. Usually just the fact that it came with too many people dipping too many things Jim was allergic to in a shared pot was enough for him to forgo the whole experience. But today they would be doing separate fondue pots using the sum total of the two pots in the Starfleet-issued kitchen supplies.

Jim turned off the burner for the stove. He didn’t notice when Bones came through the door.

“This is not what I meant when I said you had to start eating more balanced meals!”

“Bones, you’re home!” Jim popped out of the kitchen, delighted. Bones poked at the tower of serving platters on the table that Jim had constructed in an attempt to give the whole affair a more festive atmosphere.

They didn’t have a fondue fountain, so Jim at least wanted some kind of architectural food display. Jim was a bit smug when the structure didn’t sway in the least at Bones’ prodding.

“Yup.” Bones glanced over and caught sight of Alexa who’d followed Jim from the kitchen. “And who’s this?”

“I’m Alexa.” She looked back and forth quickly between Jim and Bones. “You live with Jim?”

The expression on Bones’ face tightened.

“This is Bones.” Jim said simply. Because that’s who he was.

But then Bones turned to glare at him. There was a look there. And as good as Jim was getting at interpreting Bones’ looks, Jim couldn’t figure this one out. He wanted Jim to say something else to introduce him? What else was there to say?

Jim elaborated, “He’s my husband.”

Bones sighed and made an abortive motion with his hand towards his face that looked like he wanted to pinch his brow, but then he turned to Alexa and smiled. “My real name’s Leonard McCoy, but you can call me Len if you like.”

“Jim’s the only one allowed to call you Bones?” Alexa asked, almost teasing. Jim could feel his blush spread up to his ears. Could Bones be considered a pet name?

“Guess you could say that.” Bones said.

“We should eat.” Jim said suddenly. “Before the chocolate gets cold.”

After they’d moved all the food to the table, Jim sat down in his usual spot. Alexa was sitting across from him, in the seat Bones usually sat in. Which shouldn’t have been a problem because there were plenty of chairs. Jim glanced up to see Bones hesitating.

“Sit.” Jim kicked the chair next to him out from under the table.

◦◦◦

Leonard was pissed. And he did not want to acknowledge the fact that he knew exactly why he was pissed.

It was not because Jim had introduced him as his husband. That wasn’t what he wanted Jim to say, but oh, how he had liked being called that. Something possessive inside him had snarled to life at that moment.

No, the reason Leonard was pissed was that Jim hadn’t mentioned him. Hadn’t even told Alexa that he lived with someone.

There had been a moment there, when Leonard had first walked through the door and been caught by a wave of chocolate-scented aroma. He’d seen the setup for some kind of a fancy dinner. Seen the work that Jim must’ve put together to have what looked like a nice night in with Leonard on one of his rare shifts off from medical.

Leonard had seen something a little different than their usual dinners together. A gesture. His secret romantic heart had beat to life once more.

It felt like Christmas morning as a kid again. The sheer excitement and exuberance of opening wrapped presents from under the tree. Only difference was that this time Jim was his present.

Then Jim pulled the tree skirt out from under him. Jim had company over. Jim hadn’t done all this for Leonard.

Leonard really hadn’t accounted for the fact that other people might actually come over to their apartment. He hadn’t planned on having friends close enough that he’d want them in his space. Jim was the only exception to that rule, of course.

They’d just jumped into this thing without setting up any boundaries or expectations. That fact didn’t get any clearer than right now. Some rules might have been useful for a case like this, where Leonard would have preferred a heads up to the company before he came home.

Leonard took his seat next to Jim.

“Alright, let’s dig in!” Jim said. Everyone at the table picked up their wooden skewers to start.

Alexa practically moaned as she finished her first bite, what looked like a marshmallow under all that chocolate. “This is so good! Can you believe that we almost went out to eat instead?”

Leonard still had a banana slice on his stick since he had to wait for Jim to budge over in order to use their shared chocolate pot. He gripped the stick ever so slightly tighter.

“We definitely would have missed out.” Jim laughed and he looked radiant.

Leonard shoved his chocolate covered banana into his mouth. He couldn’t have thought of a way for this situation to make him more pissed but that was definitely it. The idea of coming home to their apartment alone. No Jim. To not know where Jim had gone and only find out after the fact.

Dinner was _their_ thing.

Leonard moved his free hand under the table and set it on Jim’s thigh. Jim startled and the wafer cookie he’d picked up with his fingers missed his mouth entirely, hitting his chin, smearing chocolate across it.

Jim glanced askance at Leonard.

Leonard set down his skewer. “Look at you makin’ a mess, darlin’.” With his now free hand he swiped away the chocolate on Jim’s chin with his thumb and brought it to his own mouth. Jim’s pupils dilated as he watched Leonard suck the chocolate off.

Jim looked back across the table at Alexa who was trying a go with the pretzels in her chocolate pot. She didn’t seem bothered, happily munching. Because there was nothing to see here. Just two happily married men enjoying their meal together with a guest.

Even knowing that he had no good reason to feel territorial didn’t stop Leonard from putting his hands all over Jim in some kind of macho-man marking ritual.

“Try the strawberries.” Leonard murmured to Jim. He held one up in front of Jim’s lips close enough he could smear the chocolate all over them if he wanted. He didn’t. But he wanted to. He wanted to dirty Jim up with that chocolate. He wanted to lick it straight off of Jim’s mouth.

Jim’s eyes were wide in question, but he opened his lips for Leonard to push the strawberry in. Jim’s tongue darted down and across his lips after.

“So, Len,” Alexa started while attempting to skewer a stray grape that kept rolling away on its serving tray, “What do you plan to do at Starfleet?”

She looked genuinely interested. Leonard didn’t have anything against the girl. She seemed nice enough. Wasn’t truly her fault Leonard was feeling like a possessive bastard today.

“I’m a doctor. Ideally that’d mean getting the chance to practice medicine somewhere in service to Starfleet.”

Jim must’ve managed to swallow his strawberry because then he added, “Bones is being too humble. He’s been nominated for an award in Neurosurgery innovations.” Jim switched the hand that was holding his skewer before moving his free hand under the table. Leonard felt Jim’s strong fingers rest over his own on Jim’s thigh. A squeeze. “He interrupted his promising career to come to Starfleet and support me in my dream to become a Starship captain.”

Leonard’s thoughts sputtered to a stop. That was- That was a complete load of hooey. Jim was the one who had wanted to leave. Jim was the one supporting Leonard in this whole thing. It was a revisionist history if Leonard’s ever heard one.

“Aw. That’s so sweet. I’ve been trying to find out what I want to do with Starfleet.” Alexa set one elbow on the table and leaned her face on her hand. “I was thinking about what we talked about in the library yesterday, Jim. And I figured if I had a concrete goal I could work towards, it might help me stay motivated. Less of a nebulous ‘great things’ and more achievable.”

Leonard probably would’ve upped his opinion of Alexa with that show of practicality. If he’d been able to think straight. He was too entranced by the feel of Jim’s hand on his own. The heat, the slight sweat, the soft center and rough edges on the skin of his palm. It shouldn’t have been distracting. Leonard was the one who started this, and it wasn’t like this was the first time they’d touched hands either.

“Definitely. You need to be able to see your progress so you can feel good about it when you do well.” Jim said. “What did you have in mind?”

Alexa laughed. “Well, I think to start off with, not failing is good.”

“Jim could tutor you.” Leonard found himself saying. Jim glanced back at him, a different kind of startled this time. Leonard flipped his hand over on Jim’s thigh and laced his fingers with Jim’s. “I’ve seen his aptitude test scores and there’s probably nobody smarter on this campus than him.”

“Test scores don’t mean a whole lot.” Jim mumbled.

“Would you, though? I mean I don’t want to make you feel obligated, but I think you’d make a great tutor. You’re just so,” Alexa waved her skewer around in the air, scrunching up her face to think. “So patient.”

Jim sat there gaping like he’d never heard a kind word in his life.

Leonard squeezed Jim’s hand. As subtle of a ‘Go on, give the girl an answer’ cue as he could manage.

“Sure. If you want me to, I will. It would be a good review too.”

Later, when they’d finished eating, Alexa joined them in watching some trash reality show vid content. It was Leonard and Alexa who ended up on the couch, with Jim sitting on the floor, leaning his head back against Leonard’s knees.

Leonard was able to put away his worries until Alexa left. Managed to learn that he actually enjoyed the extra company. Heard all about each of Alexa’s four siblings back in Idaho. Which reality star was most like her comedian of a brother and which was more similar to her quieter sister.

But then she was waving goodbye, hugging Jim with promises to meet up at the library. The door shut behind her. The screen went off. The apartment was quiet except for the sounds of Jim washing up. When he got into bed that night, all Leonard’s worries came roaring back to the forefront of his mind.

Jim wasn’t his. Leonard didn’t really have any claim. He had no rational reason to be pissed at Jim for living a life that didn’t involve Leonard and not telling him about it. He found that he wasn’t even mad anymore, had no idea when the anger had left him. In its place, left behind was emptiness. A space that Leonard wanted Jim to fill.

He could convince Jim to stay with him for the rest of their time at Academy. He could follow Jim to the ends of the universe after that. Through it all, there was this, lying in the dark with Jim next to him. Knowing that at the end of the day, or days, or weeks, eventually Jim would come back to him. This would be as close as he could get with the current bounds of their relationship. He would have to be happy with this.

It wasn’t enough.

Leonard reached over in the darkness, found Jim’s hand amongst the sheets, and tangled it with his own.

Leonard squeezed his hand.

Jim squeezed back.


	7. Chapter 7

If Leonard could trust one thing it was that he couldn’t trust anyone to let him get a goddamn good night’s sleep. The comm call tone was meant to be an innocuous alert. But anything that disturbed his ability to drift in blissful unconsciousness had no right to be calling itself neutral. The sound was blaring.

He tried to jerk one hand up in an attempt to drag a pillow over his head and found it still attached to Jim. Leonard’s wrist was trapped at an awkward angle between a bicep and the mattress, while Jim’s arm curled their twinned hands close to his neck. With the other hand Leonard managed to bury his face in the sweet chemical scent of fabric softener. He groaned and pretended the world around him didn’t exist.

_Bleep. Be-beep. Bleep. Be-Beep._

Jim’s hand came apart from Leonard’s as he rolled over. Leonard let the pillow fall off of his face far enough that he could see when Jim cracked his eyes open.

“Wassit?” Jim said, voice rough with the morning’s disuse.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” Leonard replied. It wasn’t an emergency. Otherwise the alert tone would have been a wailing screech that could have gotten Leonard’s ass into gear. It must have been a call from somebody that Leonard had marked as high priority though or else it wouldn’t have come through his filters at all.

Jim leaned over him to reach out for the comm on his night stand. He squinted at the screen. “Caller ID says ‘Lawyer’.”

“Shit.” Leonard sat up and grabbed the comm back from Jim.

It was five in the morning, his head was filled with groggy mush, and Leonard wanted to groan again but knew that his time for griping was over. He rolled out of bed and shook at his hand to get the blood-flow going and the pinpricks to go away.

He answered the call as he walked through the doorframe to the living room.

“Hey, Jack.” Leonard slumped down into the couch. His feet were freezing. He half-heartedly glanced at the back of the couch. But nope there was no blanket.

“Hi, Leonard, is this a good time?” Jack’s familiar weathered face and salt-and-pepper hair jumped from the comm to the view-screen as Leonard connected the call to the apartment’s main computer. He was looking slightly off-center presumably to another screen. Always multi-tasking, that one.

Leonard grunted through a yawn.

Jack turned and looked him over. “Oh, did I wake you?” A glint of amusement at Leonard’s expense in his expression.

Leonard ran a hand over his face and rubbed the grit out of the corners of his eyes before scratching at his stubble. “Not by any fault of your own, I don’t think I ever reset the time zone on my availability hours.”

Jack was a friend of a friend, as it were. His firm was located in Atlanta, which was three hours ahead of San Francisco. It put him at a still early, but slightly more reasonable eight AM. “Well I can call back later if it works better for you. Or we can talk now. Last time we spoke you were pretty adamant about getting any news straightaway.”

Leonard sighed, bracing himself. “Just give it to me straight, Jack. It’s too early for anything else.”

“Alright, then.” Jack shuffled some things around on his desk and put on a pair of reading glasses. His voice shifted into that of someone reading an official statement. “The petition to the custody agreement that I filed on your behalf was overturned. I’m sorry.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” A moment of blazing red haze, Jack’s face blurring out of focus, Leonard struggled to pull in air. His pulse was unsteady and electric, pushing, pushing the shakes in his heart out to the rest of his torso, down into his limbs. Dexterity in the digits of his hands fell apart as the flood of unsteadiness from inside washed away any sensation from the world at large.

He scrunched his chilly toes into the stiff tufts of the drab over-sanitized carpet and just like that a curtain of faux apathy fell over him. A layer of realism and rationality bubbled out of his pores as easily as a brightly colored frog in a rainforest seeped poison from its skin. He shut everything off, disconnected until he couldn’t feel anything at all. His arms and legs might as well have popped off and floated away, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

Custody of his Joanna was the only thing he cared about. Not the house or the car. Not the money. Never the money. Was asking for some time with his daughter really that difficult a request to fulfill? Leonard closed his eyes and breathed deep. In and out. The judge hadn’t even bothered to hold another hearing, just chucked his heartfelt written pleas into the trash like they were nothing.

There was a nudge on his arm, just a brush of knuckles below the edge of his shirtsleeve. He opened his eyes. “What else can we do? There must be other options.” His voice said the words but he didn’t feel his mouth make the movements, didn’t register the thoughts that must have pre-empted such a statement.

Another nudge on his arm. Leonard looked left and locked eyes with Jim. The sympathy in the depths of those blues stretched farther than Leonard could fathom. It was almost too much. How could Jim think he was worthy of such feeling when a judge couldn’t find him worthy of being a parent? Jim was holding out a steaming cup of coffee for Leonard to take.

Jack was talking. “The objections we listed were valid. A typical case like yours and the father should be getting at least one day a week of custody.” Leonard’s fingers brushed Jim’s when he took the mug. “But I’m afraid the number one thing that they looked at was the stability of Joanna’s situation.”

Leonard should have fought more in the divorce, shouldn’t have been so resigned. He hadn’t realized that the material things would matter one iota.

“Unless there’s been a serious change in your situation, there’s not much more we can do.” Jack pushed his glasses up his nose. Leonard appreciated that he wasn’t pulling his punches. He didn’t want to get his hopes up.

Jim turned away, giving Leonard some space to deal with this in some modicum of privacy. Leonard grabbed Jim’s wrist. Desperate, heart pounding. He got his hopes up anyways like a sucker.

“What if I was re-married?” That had been one of the things the judge mentioned at the first hearing. The fact that Jocelyn was with Clay and could give Joanna a two-parent home.

Jack looked skeptical, his eyebrows pulling up and pushing his face out of its professional mask. Jim tugged on Leonard’s hold and mouthed ‘What are you doing?’ at Leonard when Jim managed to grab his attention.

“Is there any chance of you re-marrying? Because we could speak in hypotheticals all day and it wouldn’t change your actual situation.“

Leonard pulled Jim into the frame of the shot. “Jack, I’d like you to meet my new husband Jim.” The satisfaction he got from saying that should not have been able to penetrate his tank of emotions the way it did. Not after he had just topped off with soul-crushing defeat.

There was a split second of shock on Jack’s face, but it slipped away just as quickly. “Nice to meet you Jim.”

“Hey.” Jim gave a weak little wave at the view-screen.

“Congrats on your new marriage you two. Now, as it stands, a partner is a point in your favor. This puts you on a more even playing field with what Jocelyn and Clay have to offer.” Here, Jack hesitated. “Unfortunately, to convince a judge to take Joanna out of her childhood home, your situation is going to have to be not only as good as, but much better. Has there been any change in your financial standing with the marriage?”

“We haven’t combined our accounts.” Jim said, looking at Leonard, like he was trying to take cues as to how to answer.

“Ok, then.” Jack’s face softened, once again the friend and no longer the lawyer. “I’ll see what I can do. No guarantees though, and the current custody arrangement stands for now. Jocelyn’s lawyer passed along a message with preferred times for the weekly calls and a set of dates for the twice-yearly visits that work around Joanna’s school. I’ll forward it to you.”

Leonard breathed. It was the only thing he could do.

“I really am sorry it turned out for you this way, Leonard. You’re a great father.”

“Thanks. I know you did everything you could.”

The call ended without much more than typical pleasantries for goodbyes. Leonard looked down at his lap. He was still clutching Jim’s wrist in a death grip. He let go.

“Bones, listen.” Leonard didn’t turn to face Jim. He didn’t melt into a puddle of grief on the floor like he felt he was at risk of any second, either. Jim spoke fast. “I have some money. There’s a trust fund set up that I haven’t touched.” Probably life insurance on Jim’s Dad after the Kelvin. “If there’s any chance, …” Jim left the sentence hanging.

“I can’t take your money.” He took a swig of the coffee he hadn’t touched. Still warm.

Jim looked taken aback for a beat, but then said, “Ok.”

Oxygen, water, food, sleep. Those were the essentials to life. Leonard got up and padded into the kitchen. He needed to eat. There was no way he was going to be able to go back to bed after this. And he wouldn’t make it to his usual late breakfast time without his stomach complaining loudly. Which was still-. He checked the display on the replicator. Five hours from now. Oh, goody.

Jim went shopping yesterday, didn’t he? Maybe there was some leftover chocolate somewhere. It wouldn’t exactly win for healthiest breakfast of the year, but whatever. Leonard opened the first cabinet on the right of the stove.

Stopped. Stared. What in the-? Were those socks? He closed the cabinet door slowly. Then he opened it again as if his sleep deprived brain would provide him with some other hallucination. No such luck. Just a package of brand new socks.

Jim had the weirdest habits. Leonard had already catalogued and dismissed the tub of protein bars tucked under Jim’s side of the bed. Now socks in the cabinets. What was next, a pet goldfish in the dresser drawer next to his boxers? Leonard closed the cabinet one last time. He was not touching that particular quirk with a ten meter pole and was not going to look and see if he could find any more cabinet surprises. Crappy replicated oatmeal for breakfast it would be then.

He took the bowl back out to the dining table. Grabbing a leftover banana from the counter on the way. He sat. Mashed his banana with the spoon into his oatmeal. Jim sat down across from him, not making eye contact, fiddling with a PADD.

“So, your daughter.” Jim said.

“Yes, my daughter. Joanna.” Leonard sighed into his bowl, squeezed his eyes tight again. He didn’t know if he could do this, dredge everything up again. He owed it to Jim though. They needed to have this talk. He’d dragged Jim far enough into his shit without explanation.

“How old is she?” Jim asked, thankfully starting off simple.

“Six. She’ll be just starting first grade this year. Teachers thought she was smart enough to skip up to second,” Leonard gushed, unable to keep out the pride for his baby girl, “Jocelyn and I thought it was better to keep her socializing with her own age group. Just ‘bout the only thing we agreed on in the last couple months there.”

“And you wanted full custody?” Jim said quietly. Leonard thought that would have been clear from the call, but Jim had moved his focus from the PADD to staring at him with a laser-like kind of intensity that demanded a thorough answer.

“Yeah. If I’d stayed close by, I might’ve been able to get weekends with her. But making her fly across the country twice a week isn’t the best for a six year old.” Even Leonard could acknowledge that. “Full custody was the only way I’d see her for more than just birthdays and holidays.”

That, it seemed was enough to satisfy Jim, because he nodded and got up to move towards the kitchen.

Leonard grabbed him by the wrist again before he passed. Jim’s arm tensed under his hold. Leonard let go. Christ. He had to stop doing that. It felt like he was trying to keep Jim on a leash. “Wait a sec.”

Warily, Jim sat down again.

“You got any plans for the holidays?” He was trying to keep it neutral. Since he still didn’t know what it was about Jim’s family that sent him running straight the other way, all he knew was he would tread carefully instead of stepping a foot straight into his own mouth.

The non-sequitur seemed to catch Jim off guard because there was a pause before he answered. “No.”

“So you’re going to be around the whole break?” It was a fairly substantial two week winter holiday period between semesters.

Another pause. “Yeah.” Jim said carefully.

“Would you-“ Fuck, this was hard. “You wouldn’t mind if I brought Joanna here?” He didn’t think Jocelyn would let him have the actual holidays. But he could probably finagle the week beforehand, right after finals, when he could spend entire days with her.

“No, of course not. She’s your daughter! This is your apartment. Why would I mind?” Jim seemed outraged at the idea.

“It’s the courteous thing to do, to ask permission first.” Just lay it out all on the line, Leonard, he told himself. He looked Jim straight in the eyes and said in a firm tone. “I’d prefer it if you told me before you bring anyone over. And nobody besides you and me goes anywhere near our bedroom.”

Jim’s mouth opened and closed a few times, caught somewhere between shock and chided. “Ok.” He finally said, voice catching. “Do you want me to make myself scarce? Give you guys some privacy while she’s here?”

No. No, that was the opposite of what he wanted. Jim’s place was beside Leonard. Always. “Do you want to meet her?”

“You’d let me? It’s a big deal, a big responsibility.” Jim worked his jaw, eyes glancing around the room. “Adults shouldn’t just pop in and out of kids lives at the drop of a hat.”

“The fact that you recognize that is exactly why I’m fine with you meeting her. It’s your call Jim, whether or not you want to be in her life.”

Jim hedged with his next questions. “What about your family? Don’t you want to go see them?”

“You really wanna meet my Momma, that bad? She’s gonna grill you.” And she’d give Leonard the look that meant he had another thing coming once she realized he’d gotten married again and hadn’t told her.

Jim couldn’t get much more shocked at the idea that Leonard would take Jim back to Georgia with him. It prompted an answer out of him at the very least.

“No. Nope. Just meeting Joanna is fine.”

“Good. It’s settled.”

Leonard could barely contemplate it. Jim and Joanna, together, in the same room with Leonard at the same time. It seemed like a dream.

◦◦◦

Six in the morning was not a good time for alcohol, so Leonard finished his breakfast, showered, dressed, and checked over his scheduled plans for the day. Then he went to the range to blow off some steam.

He’d been meaning to come find the place for a while. On the walk over, campus was mostly empty but there were a handful of the early-bird types out on morning jogs. Leonard barely suppressed a cringe. Getting out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn to go exercise? Yeah, no thanks. He’d make do with the gym after his shifts three times a week.

The range itself was near the gym, in a secluded part of campus behind the sports fields and the track. It was a pretty little section with lots of greenery. The trees still had their leaves. No doubt if it wasn’t so early in the morning, it wouldn’t be quite so peaceful. The chirruping birds would be constantly getting interrupted with the intermittent sounds of phaser fire.

There was no one inside, not even anybody sitting behind the weapons checkout desk. The place was technically open, but the staff wouldn’t come in until later. Leonard eyed the display behind the dura-glass window. No staff meant no one to give the go ahead for Leonard to check out one of the larger bazookas and no one to re-arrange the targets into a more complicated pattern at request. He’d have to come back later for that.

Leonard dug out his Starfleet ID. Turned to the weapons checkout automated locker. He pushed his card into the slot and the machine ate it. Leonard would only get his ID back when he returned whatever weapon he decided to check out. It was a little bit of extra security and kept people from checking out more than one weapon at a time, so nobody could hog a whole cache.

Leonard selected the familiar silhouette of a plasma rifle from the menu. To his right, a drawer clicked open with a hiss, unlocked, and slid out to reveal the metallic sheen of the rifle resting in a form-fitting cutout. When he picked it up, he checked the status. Fully charged. He could get up to ten thousand shots on this baby before he would have to return it to charge and replace it for a new one.

The heft of the rifle felt good in his hands. He picked a lane. Clicked off the safety. Brought his eye up to the scope, settling his hands into position. He pulled the trigger.

Boom.

The sound crackled, echoes vibrating. The target at the far end of the range featured a small new black scorch. Right down the center. Leonard grinned. He still had it.

It had been a fair few years since he’d last held a plasma rifle, that’s for sure. He was ten when his granddaddy on his momma’s side took him out onto the back of his five-acre property and showed him the proper way to hold and scope down a rifle. Twelve the first time he knocked out every single glass bottle sitting up on the shelf at the other side of the field without missing a shot. Fourteen the first time he shot skeet, hitting down the small clay pigeons lobbed aloft for the purpose.

It was more for sport than any actual intentions of shooting somebody. Leonard was good at it too. When he was in the zone, he had steady hands and sharp eyes. The same characteristics that made him a good doctor.

Jocelyn hadn’t understood it. A lot of men used the sport as a way to go out and prove something to themselves and others. She thought he treated it like that, a competition. She thought it didn’t become a doctor. That doctors should be all about healing and never even touch anything that had connotations of violence.

Leonard never understood _that_. The scalpels he held every day to help heal people could be turned for violence as easily as a rifle. It was never the weapon’s fault; it was the person holding the weapon who had to be held accountable. A weapon didn’t have the capacity to carry guilt and regret the same way a man did.

It wasn’t about violence. It wasn’t a competition. It was just him, the rifle, and the targets. That’s all there was out here. None of the crap in his life could come invade this space.

Boom.

He eyed the target. Slightly left. Ok, maybe he was a little bit rusty.

He stopped going shooting the first time after his granddaddy passed when he was seventeen. It hadn’t seemed right. Shooting was something they shared together. His granddaddy had been a man of few words, but when he was out on the range, he came alive before Leonard’s eyes.

They’d had more conversations about new rifle specs than they did anything else. Whenever he was out there with his granddaddy, getting good grades to get into college, to get good grades to get into med school didn’t matter. He just had to shoot the target. Straight and center.

The rifle was the opposite of violence in Leonard’s hands. If he slipped with the scalpel in the operating room, death could be fast and swift. But if he was slightly off target nothing bad happened. Nobody died. There were no consequences here if he missed his shot.

Boom.

He could admit that there was a bit of him that liked the power too. The feel that holding the rifle gave him. Agency, control. He might not be the king of the world, but he was in charge of this machine that could spit out 45 thousand kWh of energy in a single shot.

He picked the rifle back up when he was twenty. That had been while he knew _of_ Jocelyn and knew he wanted to date her but they hadn’t gone out yet. There had been a few rough weeks prior, a failed calculus exam, an all-nighter writing a history of eugenics paper that left him in a weird mental space the entire following day, and a few times he stared off into space for minutes at a time as he started questioning whether medicine was even the right career path for him.

One day after a six hour organic chemistry lab class he’d had enough. He found the nearest range on a PADD and ordered a lift to take him there. He hadn’t even gone back to the dorm to wash the stink of chemicals off his skin.

The first time on a real range was a bit different to his granddaddy’s setup in the yard. It had been the first time he worried what the people in the lanes to the left and right had to think of his shots, his style, the way he held the gun. It had been intimidating, there were guys there who looked like they’d been born on the range. A rat-a-tat boom, boom, boom, boom would echo in on all sides.

But he needed it. The release it gave him from just existing in a moment with him, the rifle, and the targets. So he shot. No one cared how he shot. Everybody minded there own business and stayed in their lanes. Literally.

Boom.

He’d kept going to the range on weekends and after classes every few weeks during undergrad. At twenty-two, he married Jocelyn and they got pregnant. That’s when she threw a fit about the rifle thing. Something about how rifles had no place being around babies.

There wasn’t much time left in his life for hobbies anyways. Not with med school and a newborn on his hands. He’d always been ambitious, so he packed away the rifle and left it as a part of his past as he moved on with his career.

But Jocelyn was nowhere near him now. She wouldn’t be able to take this away from him too. Not like she took his baby girl.

Boom.

The house.

Boom.

The car.

Boom.

His reputation.

Boom.

He hadn’t actually found Clay in bed with his wife. There had been no physical relations between Clay and Jocelyn while the marriage was on the record. It was more of an emotional affair. Unexplained comm messages. Constantly being ‘tired’ when Leonard started to try and spark to life what was at that point an already dying marriage.

When Jocelyn left him, at first nobody even knew about Clay. Then people started to realize they’d been having an affair. A month in, and they thought Leonard found scandalous comm messages instead of being blindsided by a wife announcing she was leaving him for another man. By three months in, the rumor mill invented this whole scenario of Leonard walking in on his wife in the midst of bedroom activities with Clay in his own marriage bed.

It wasn’t true. That was Jocelyn’s only saving grace in divorce court. If there had actually been a physical affair, Leonard would have gotten the house, and the car, and his baby girl.

Boom.

Leonard clicked the safety on and set the rifle down to the side. He walked to the side of the lane and hit the switch that would change out the target. It was starting to look a bit worse for the wear.

He picked the rifle back up and clicked the safety off. Eyed down the scope. Hands in position, he pulled the trigger.

Boom.

This wasn’t just for him. As much as the repetitive motions helped clear his head, Leonard had a goal in mind. He needed a sniper certification. For all that Starfleet liked to talk about being a peacekeeping organization, they were paramilitary. What other kind of peacekeeping organization had a weapons range?

Boom.

With a sniper certification, he’d fulfill the requirement for self-defense and he wouldn’t have to take a hand-to-hand combat class. That’s how most cadets got the requirement out of the way. Sparring. Now there’s a real way to incite violence amongst ranks. Nothing says peacekeeping like pitting young hormonal teenagers against each other with the expectation they were going to beat each other up with their fists.

Boom.

Leonard had treated more injuries than he’d like to count in his shifts at medical from hand-to-hand classes taken too far. At least here, at the range, he wasn’t pitted against anyone. It was just himself, the rifle, and the target.

Boom.

He’d be anxiously anticipating the day that Jim came home from hand-to-hand with bruised knuckles and a split lip. Leonard remembered the way Jim was on the shuttle to the Academy. Bursting at the seams with an energy that had no place to go. He’d settled down a bit with the routine of the Academy and the way classes and studying filled the time. That energy didn’t just go nowhere though, it’d be back.

Boom.

Jim. God. Jim was something else. Leonard needed him, but there was no way he’d ever be able to contain him. He just had to ride the wave of energy that was Jim Kirk.

Boom.

◦◦◦

“So the good news is that we haven’t had midterms yet. You’ve got both the midterm and the final to try and bring up your grade.” Jim said, leaning back into the lounge-style couch back. The seating was much more comfortable in this group study area than it had been up in the quiet zone amongst the stacks.

“It’s hopeless. Why did I think I could do this?” Alexa ranted. She had flashcards for three hundred and seventeen different species of non-Terran plants loaded onto the PADD in front of her. “There’s no way I’ll be able to memorize all of these.”

“I don’t think you really need to memorize them. Have you ever played that game twenty questions?”

“What? The one where you start out asking if its an animal, plant or a mineral?” The game was outdated, but most of the fun came from the cases where the thing you were thinking of wasn’t really an animal, plant, or a mineral.

“Yeah. So, obviously every single one of these would be a plant, right?” Jim watched as Alexa nodded along encouragingly.

“And then what would you ask next, if you were trying to identify one of them?” Jim questioned.

“Ugh. I don’t know. Does it have leaves?”

“Great. So you see how they can be categorized based on whether the plant has leaves, needles, spines, or something else.” Jim explained.

“Ok, and if it didn’t have leaves, I could ask whether it had needles?”

“Correct. But if it did have leaves, you could ask something more specific about the leaves to try and narrow it down. That old saying, ‘Leaves of three, let them be’ references poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac because they have a similar leaf pattern. The concept should be the same even in non-Terran plants. You don’t need to memorize all the plants. You just need to know enough of the distinguishing characteristics to narrow it down enough for your purposes.” Jim had by far too much practical knowledge in foraging unknown plants on Tarsus.

“So, like on a test, if it was a matching problem, start with the ones that have the most distinguishing characteristics that I know about?”

“Yes!” Jim was proud, so glad it seemed like she was getting it.

“Um, excuse me?” Someone said to their left. Jim looked up and saw a guy with a barbell piercing through his lip and thick-framed black glasses standing next to their table.

“Yes?” Jim answered.

“I couldn’t help but overhear. Are you studying for Xeno-Bio 112?”

“Yeah.” Alexa answered this time.

“Oh, thank God. Would you mind if I joined you? Sorry, if _we_ joined you. My friend Ramneet over there sent me to ask after we heard you.” The guy said.

Jim looked to Alexa for a decision, she was the one who actually needed to study for the class. So she should be the one to decide if anyone could join them.

Alexa glanced to where the guy was pointing to see a girl watching them closely. “Sure, the more the merrier.”

The guy nodded and waved Ramneet over. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. That class is killer. What is up with those weekly quizzes? I cannot believe that we are expected to memorize dozens of plants every week.”

“Have you introduced yourself, Seb?” Ramneet interrupted him, setting her bag on an empty chair at the table Jim and Alexa were occupying. She had dark eyes and hair, was wearing a floral print shirt, and had a much calmer energy than Seb.

“Oh, yeah. My name’s Sebastian. I go by Seb for short. My mom wanted to nickname me Bash, but even as a three year old I knew I wasn’t the hulking caveman type to go ‘Smash! Crash! Bash!’ so it just didn’t stick.” Seb over-explained.

“Cool, well I’m Jim and this is Alexa.” Jim introduced.

And then they studied. Starting with different levels at which they could categorize the plants. Then with common trip-ups among similar looking plants that had massively different uses. Interspersed throughout were little jokes about how the professor for Xeno-Bio 112 had a moustache that looked enough like one of these plants it should be on the test too and speculation on which plant would be the best to get high off the smoke from.

At the end of the hour, Jim had to leave. He had another class to get to. They all exchanged comm information so that they could meet up again.

“You’re Jim _Kirk_?” Seb asked, staring incredulously at the screen where Jim had just entered his information.

“Yeah.” Jim shrugged.

“Hey! Don’t say it like that. Just because his Dad’s got a statue out on the lawn doesn’t mean he’s not a regular guy.” Ramneet scolded, like it was her personal job to keep Seb in line. It probably was, based on their interactions over the last hour.

“His Dad’s got a statue on the lawn?!” Seb repeated, even more surprised.

Ramneet looked affronted for the first time that Jim had seen. “If it wasn’t that, why were you so surprised to hear he’s Jim Kirk?” She put special emphasis on Kirk, mimicking Seb’s shocked tone.

“I’ve just heard a couple things is all.” Seb said.

Alexa jumped in, adding, “You shouldn’t listen to just any rumor you overhear. At least not until it’s been verified by trusted independent sources. I grew up in a small town. Trust me, I know.”

Seb rushed to apologize, “No. Sorry man. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just surprised. You’re not like what I expected. At all.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jim didn’t let it bother him. He started cleaning up the table, disconnecting his own PADD from the view-screen on the wall next to their work area.

“Thank you again for the tutoring Jim. I don’t think I could have done it without you.” Alexa said.

“You were tutoring her? And we just barged in? Oh, I am so sorry.” Ramneet must have been much more of a stickler for social protocol than Jim was.

“It’s informal.” Jim waved his hands around, trying to dispel whatever juju he’d picked up that was making everyone apologize to him. Technically, he didn’t even _go_ here. They had nothing to apologize for when he was the fraud in their midst.

“Dude. You should make it formal. That was the best study session I’ve had all week.” Seb said. “I’d pay you.”

“No. No, I don’t need your money.” Jim echoed the words Bones said to him that morning. It was different though wasn’t it? Bones was trying to get time with his daughter. That was for a good cause. Them paying him to do what he’d do anyways, just seemed wrong. Jim wasn’t trying to scam them.

“What about food? We can pay you in pizza. Have some dinner study sessions.” Seb insisted.

“Seriously guys. It’s fine.” Dinner was one of Jim’s favorite parts of the day. That was his time with Bones. He couldn’t give that up. “If you really want to spend money, donate it to charity on my behalf. Here, this one.” Jim reconnected his PADD back to the view-screen and pulled up the page for the Tarsus IV Survivor’s Collective Fund. “They help colony planets secure their food supplies and educate the public on the history of genocide.”

“That looks like a really good cause.” Ramneet copied the information to her own PADD.

“Yeah. It is.” Jim said.

◦◦◦

Jim and Bones knew a little too much about each other to be considered just good friends. A good friend knew your shoe size. A great friend knew your shoe size and the fact that you liked loose socks, so you bought socks a size up from your shoe size.

Jim and Bones were at the stage of their relationship, where Jim knew Bones’ shoe size, his sock size, and the fact that Bones didn’t like the scratch of the cotton of the standard issue uniform black socks.

Jim bought him a nylon-polyester mix that looked just like the standard issue socks if you didn’t know any better. He put the package in the kitchen cabinets because he’d unpacked them from the same bags that held the groceries he’d bought with Alexa. He didn’t realize it was weird because the habit of hiding things in the cabinets was a holdover from his days hiding things from Frank. The man used a replicator for food every day that Jim had known him. He never once touched the cabinets.

On weekends, Bones wore the most hideous off-white socks that pulled up past his ankle a quarter of the way up his calf. He wouldn’t take them off, because he had cold feet, and the apartment floors, while carpeted, were not lush and luxurious. Jim had cold feet too. Instead of ugly socks though, Jim curled his feet into Bones body heat whenever they sat together on the couch, which Jim tried to do as often as possible.

Bones took the sock thing to a whole other level. He had sock etiquette. He wouldn’t wear socks to bed because they always managed to come off in the night and get lost in the sheets. So he’d take special care to tuck the ends of the sheets in around his feet and try to bundle the warmth in. When he got home from classes, he wouldn’t take off the itchy (to him) uniform socks because he only wanted to dirty one pair of socks a day. The exception to this rule was when he went to the gym. If he’d sweated in a pair of socks for a workout, and then showered, it was acceptable to change socks for a more comfortable (read: hideous) pair.

Bones would have never complained about the uniform socks. Because that’s not the kind of man that he was. But he looked so damn grateful when Jim handed him the package that night before starting dinner. Jim smiled to himself because making Bones happy like that made him happy like that too.

“These. These are for me?” Bones asked, his voice all choked up over six pairs of socks. His hands grasping at the package. Even knowing that Bones had a rough morning, Jim didn’t think a single package of socks was worth this kind of reaction.

“Surprise! I would have gotten more. But I didn’t want to buy more until I knew you liked them.” Jim explained.

Bones stared at him for a full twenty seconds, his face never settling on a single expression. Then he started sobbing. Heaving big choking gasps of air. He pulled Jim into a hug, crushing Jim to his chest. Jim shushed him. “It’s fine, Bones. It’s just some socks. We can order more online if you don’t like these ones.”

Bones’ tears trailed down Jim’s neck, wetting the front of Jim’s shirt. Jim thought they might be happy tears, so he wasn’t that worried. His suspicions were confirmed when Bones started calling him names. “It’s not just the socks, you insufferable sock-buying maniac.” Bones squeezed him even harder in his arms.

Jim understood. It wasn’t just the socks. It was the fact that Jim had bought him the socks. It was the fact that Jim cared.

“Air. Air. I need oxygen, Bones!” Jim gasped out.

Bones didn’t let go, even as he let Jim up for air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two small disclaimers here:  
> 1) This is not meant to be condoning or endorsing any specific political opinions on gun control  
> 2) I know next to nothing about child custody law, if anything is wrong here *handwaves* just go with it


	8. Chapter 8

Jim ran home in the rain, the garment bag clutched close to his chest. He was about ninety percent certain the material covering his brand new suit was waterproof. But he didn’t want to risk it.

He should have just ordered a lift. It was sixteen blocks west and twelve blocks south to get back to campus from the men’s formalwear store. Walkable, technically, but when you considered the way he had to re-route around the major highway that divided neighborhoods, an extra ten minutes got tacked on to the total trip time.

He was planning to order the lift too. Until he went up to the register and the sales clerk charged the total to his credit chip. He’d like to think his eyes didn’t bug out at the amount. Regardless, Jim was reluctant to overspend on an indulgence like a car when he could just walk instead.

It hadn’t been raining when he left the store. Overcast, sure. Fall was coming in, and for Northern California that meant just a bit of chill and some intermittent rain showers the last few weeks.

He hadn’t had the misfortune to get caught out in the rain. Until now.

There weren’t puddles on the ground, per se. Just an overall layer of wet. The drizzle streamed down in rivulets across the road-way towards the sloping drains.

That was the other reason he should have just ordered the lift. The hills.

Jim was on a downhill now, his feet slapping the sidewalk with wet schluck, schluck sounds. Little sprays of water drenched his ankles and seeped into his shoes with every step.

He was in pretty good shape, so the burn in his quads from the last uphill eased up quickly.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how if Bones were here, he’d be berating Jim for the damage the downhill pavement pounding was almost certainly doing to his knees.

He should have at least worn his jacket; the leather was reasonably waterproof. But he’d streamlined his outfit today to make changing in and out of his clothes for the final fitting easier.

Three blocks now. Jim went left at a traffic light, moving towards the less populous streets closer to the Academy. An all-way stop, a traffic circle, and a crosswalk before Jim was back on campus.

Starfleet housing pretty much all looked the same from the outside. Grey. Mid-rise. There was a main lobby in each building with a mailroom and a laundry room.

Jim had gotten the impression some of the other dorms had common spaces. Pool tables or shared kitchens. Presumably, these were to make up for the fact that the rooms themselves weren’t as nice.

Jim didn’t turn toward the main entrance for his building. He headed instead for the overhang covering the exterior stairwell.

Finally. Out of the rain, he paused at the bottom of the stairs to wipe the combination of sweat and rainwater from his brow. He caught his breath. The sound of the rain drowned out most of the city noise. Not many people were outside either, the muddy quad a limiting factor in the usual frisbee and frolicking activities.

It was quiet. Peaceful.

Jim’s shoes squelched up the stairs, releasing their catch of rainwater dribble by dribble.

Jim keyed in his code twice. First on the exterior door to the building. Then again on the door to the apartment.

“You look like a drowned puppy.” Bones welcomed him home from his spot on the couch.

“Well, hello to you too.” Jim resisted the urge to shake off like a golden retriever and toed out of his shoes and socks.

He set the garment bag on the table. He wanted to double check the covering had done its job, but first he wanted to dry off. No use in seeing the suit was fine only to drip all over it.

He ducked into the bathroom. Hesitated as he contemplated a shower. He _had_ just been running for a good twenty minutes. But he didn’t feel sweaty. If anything he felt cleansed, refreshed.

His lungs were clear. The difference in his ability to breathe free and unimpeded between now and his run was stark.

He ran his towel over his face and hair.

Jim’s clothes were stuck to him like a second skin. He pulled off his shirt and dropped it into the tub of the combined shower/bath. He unbuttoned his jeans and stepped out of them. Those went in the tub too. He’d let them air out before putting them in with the rest of his laundry.

His boxer-briefs were mostly dry, saved from the worst of it by his jeans. Jim wiped down his body as best he could before hanging the towel around his neck and stepping back into the living room.

Bones had unveiled the suit from the garment bag. He was standing over it, a glass of whiskey in one hand, glaring down at it like formalwear was the first step on the path towards all evil.

“You have to take this back.” Bones said, before he looked up and caught sight of Jim in all of his mostly undressed glory.

Bones took a quick sip of whiskey, eyes running up and down the length of Jim’s body.

“No. I don’t think so.” Jim slunk forward, edging up to the table. “It’s custom-tailored. Makes my ass look great. You want to see?”

Jim reached out to grab the suit pants, but Bones caught his hand before it found the waistband.

“Jim.” Bones warned, voice low.

Jim smiled, chuckled a little darkly. “Oh. I get it. You want to keep me undressed? Is that it?” He dared Bones with his eyes to call him on his bluster.

Bones dropped Jim’s hand like it burned. His expression almost angry for a second. “Fine. Put it on.” Bones bit out.

Bones took a step back, pulled a chair out from the table and thumped down into it.

Jim dropped the towel and picked up the suit pants. He felt for the tag, wanting to rip all the tags off and make it impossible to return. He was bewildered for a half-second when he couldn’t find it before remembering the way the tailor removed them all when he was double-checking the fit.

The place had been boutique. Jim was almost surprised they’d only put the suit in a garment bag instead of wrapping it up in tissue and laying it in a box for him.

Jim slid each leg into the suit pants. He locked eyes with Bones as he hitched the waistband over his ass. They didn’t speak. Bones took a long slow drink of his whiskey as Jim zipped up his fly. Bones’ throat worked as he swallowed.

It was almost a reverse strip-tease. Bones sitting there, watching. Jim standing, pulling one arm and then the other through the shirt sleeves. Every button he pushed through the appropriate button-hole hid another several inches of Jim’s skin, but ratcheted up the tension in the room by some exponential factor.

There was no music, but that somehow made it more intense, more intimate. Every rustle of silk that much louder in the quiet.

Jim was putting these clothes on for Bones. Making himself pretty and presentable so that Bones could enjoy the way they fell on his skin. The clean lines and dark fabric. In this smooth, sumptuous cloth, Jim felt expensive.

He’d thought the solid deep navy suit and white collared shirt looked sophisticated when he’d seen himself in the mirror at the shop. But now he wondered just what he looked like in Bones’ eyes at that moment. His hair was still slightly wet. Did it glisten?

He tucked the shirt into his pants. Bones leaned back, letting his knees fall wide.

Jim shrugged into the jacket. The outfit wasn’t complete. He hadn’t put on his tie. He was barefoot. He had no cufflinks. That didn’t matter at all when Bones said,

“Come here.”

All of a sudden Jim was self-conscious. Hesitant. Did he look attractive? Elegant?

Bones patted his right thigh. The motion was as clear as it was commanding. _Come here._

Jim went.

He stepped right up into the space between Bones’ knees. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Put them on Bones’ shoulders? Let them hang by his sides? Jim clasped them behind his back. He was at attention for Bones’ inspection.

Jim was the one standing, Bones was at eye-level with his torso but it couldn’t have been clearer that Bones was in charge of this moment.

Bones set his whiskey on the floor to his side. The ice in the glass clinked together. He brought his hands up to Jim’s waist, where they hovered for a long moment. They stared at each other, neither one of them moving except to breathe. Was Jim only imagining the way he felt heat coming off of Bones’ hand?

Bones set his hands on Jim’s hips, maneuvering them under the flaps of the open suit jacket. Jim stopped breathing for a second before sucking in a small gasp of air.

Bones ran his hands down and then back up the outside of Jim’s thighs, from his hips to his knees, following the lines of Jim’s pants.

Then he settled his hands on Jim’s ass. And pulled.

Jim went willingly, knees knocking with Bones’ as his thighs spread until he was in Bones’ lap, with a face-full of Bones’ hair, and Bones nosing at his neck.

This close he could smell the whiskey. He wondered if Bones could smell the sweat from his run still on his skin.

Bones squeezed his ass. Jim whimpered.

“Is it-” _pretty enough for you?_ Jim couldn’t say it.

“Is it what?” Bones breathed into his neck. Jim shuddered.

He couldn’t not answer when Bones asked him a question. “Do I look good?” His voice came out a whisper.

“So good, darlin’. You were right. Your ass is incredible in these pants.” Bones punctuated the statement by kneading Jim’s flesh through the pants.

“I can keep it then? The suit?” Jim asked even though he knew it was probably non-refundable. An all-sales-final kind of place.

Bones’ hands stilled. Jim waited. It was a loaded question. Bones wouldn’t just be allowing Jim to keep the suit. He’d be implicitly accepting that Jim was going to wear it. That they would get dressed and go out. Together.

“I’ll let you keep it on one condition.”

“Yeah?”

“You have to behave. No more signing us up for things without telling me.”

“I can behave.” He wanted to. He wanted to be good for Bones.

Bones pulled back from Jim’s neck. His hands moved up to cup Jim’s face.

“How about we have a little test? If you pass, you keep it.”

“What kind of test?”

“Go sit down on the bed.” Bones pushed Jim up out of his lap.

Oh. That kind of behaving. Jim could do that. Jim half-ran into the bedroom. He started unbuttoning his shirt.

Bones followed at a sedate pace, setting his whiskey on top of the dresser.

“Did I say to take your clothes off?”

Jim froze.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Jim let his hands fall to the sides. Bones came up and started unbuttoning where Jim left off. He helped Jim out of both his shirt and suit jacket. He set them aside.

Bones stood before him and pressed one finger onto the wedding band on its chain hanging around Jim’s neck. He tugged lightly, left, right, before letting the ring slip by and trailing that fingertip down, down, down Jim’s chest and abs until he reached the fly of Jim’s pants.

Bones unbuttoned, then he unzipped. The barest of glancing touches and Jim almost keened. But Bones’ hands left.

“Lean back.” Jim laid down, arching his neck to watch as Bones kneeled at his feet.

More directions. “Lift your hips.” Then Bones was tugging the ends of his suit pants.

Jim was left lying on the bed in his boxer-briefs. Anticipating. Panting shallowly.

Bones got up and went to the dresser.

He came back with Jim’s plaid pajama pants.

A sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh escaped Jim.

“Are you getting me ready for bed?” Jim’s tone was incredulous. He couldn’t help it.

Bones maneuvered Jim’s feet into the leg holes. “Lift your hips.” He said again as he pushed the waistband higher and higher on Jim’s legs.

“It’s like four in the afternoon. On a Saturday.” Jim whined.

“Is this what you call behaving?”

Jim lifted his hips for Bones to pull the pajamas all the way up.

Bones stripped. It was way fewer buttons. He pulled his t-shirt overhead before undoing his jeans and letting them slip to the floor.

He didn’t go back to the dresser for the sweatpants he usually wore to bed. Bones crawled up next to Jim in just his boxers.

Bones spooned him, Jim’s back to Bones’ front, Bones’ arms wrapped tight. Bones’ body was solid, warm, secure.

“If you wanted to cuddle, you could have just asked.”

“Shh. Backtalk is not behaving.”

“You’re a real tease. You know that?”

“If you do not stop talking I’m going to spank you.”

“Kinky. I like it.”

Bones smacked a single playful swat onto the side of his hip. Jim was quiet then, but he made it a point to grind his ass back into where he could feel Bones’ interest. His wriggling just made Bones hold him tighter.

◦◦◦

Leonard had a whole speech prepared for when Jim brought up the awards gala again. It started with ‘I’m not going.’ And ended with ‘I’m not going.’ The middle was pretty good too, with small variations on the theme ‘I’m not going.’

All the words dried up as soon as he saw Jim shrugging into that suit jacket.

In Leonard’s mind he’d had this image of himself as a sorry, sad, sap standing on the outskirts of the party. Leaning against a wall, bitter and drunk as everyone else had just enough fun to make him stick out like a sore thumb for not having a good time.

He hadn’t thought to imagine a scenario with Jim on his arm. Jim in a suit. Going to get a drink for Jim. A hand at the small of Jim’s back. Dancing. Pulling on Jim’s lapels to tug him closer. Straightening Jim’s tie.

Leonard’s resolve crumbled. He would be going to the stupid party with Jim whether or not Jim behaved.

Leonard finally gave into the urge to card his fingers through Jim’s hair. Jim had been asleep for the last twenty minutes. They’d been relaxing in bed for more than an hour.

He’d wanted to push Jim, to see how much Jim would let him take. Each touch fulfilled Leonard in a way he doubted much else ever would. He kept expecting to find Jim’s limit. To hit a wall where Jim would tense up and pull out of Leonard’s hold.

Instead, Jim was putty in Leonard’s hands, he just kept giving more and more of himself over. It was heady. Leonard could have taken everything, could have consumed Jim’s spirit whole. Intertwined that raging energy with his own. Mashed their tendrils of affection until they were all tied up together in a knot that wouldn’t give.

Leonard wanted to at the same time that he knew he never would. He couldn’t. Not while it meant more to Leonard than he thought it did to Jim. This thing they had together was too precious to risk.

Jim was loose-limbed. Leonard felt him stir at the touch of Leonard’s hand on his head.

“Mmm.” Jim made a sigh of contentment.

“We’re gonna go back to that tailor first thing tomorrow.” Leonard said. Jim tensed and Leonard hated it so he kept talking immediately. “I’ve gotta get a suit that matches don’t you think?”

There was no way Leonard was wearing the Starfleet dress uniform. He’d be the only one there in it and he’d stick out like a sore thumb in an entirely different way.

Jim relaxed. “Not identical. Something complementary.”

“Grey?” Leonard leaned up on one elbow and rubbed the back of Jim’s neck with his other hand, pressing his thumb in with small circles.

“No. Too boring. You’d look good in a pinstripe. White on navy. Maybe a houndstooth.” Jim’s voice was a low hum of a murmur.

It wasn’t Leonard’s usual style. But he’d wear it for Jim.

“You pick it out for me alright?”

“Yeah.”

◦◦◦

Farid kept glancing to the seat on his left. Jim hadn’t shown up yet. The exam would start in three minutes and twelve seconds. There was a countdown on the screen at the front of the room ticking down with that exact number. When it reached zero it would start counting upwards, so all the test takers would know how much time had passed out of their allotted hour.

The proctors would shut and lock the doors from the outside at two minutes to go, so that latecomers couldn’t disturb the test. If Jim didn’t show up soon, he was going to miss the exam completely. It was giving Farid second-hand anxiety, and he already had as much anxiety as he could currently handle.

It wasn’t like he knew Jim all that well. But Jim had sat next to Farid for most of the semester so far. Jim had lent Farid his notes after that day Farid’s sister had unexpectedly gone into labor early, and Farid had skipped most of Friday’s classes to catch a shuttle back home for the weekend.

Farid shuffled the secured testing PADD around on the rounded triangular pull-out desk attached to his chair in the auditorium’s amphitheater-style seating. The secured PADDs had no physical network chip installed as a safeguard to prevent cheating. They had the same rectangular shape and screen as a regular PADD though.

Farid couldn’t help but wonder, if they went to the trouble of designing a special testing PADD, why couldn’t they make sure the PADD actually fit on the tiny desks? One corner hung off the edge of the desk no matter how he shuffled the PADD around to fit.

Maybe Jim was just sitting further away today? Their professor and the two extra TAs that had shown up to help proctor kept repeating instructions for students to maintain a buffer distance of one seat between each other whenever possible. There were too many students in the class to enforce that rule completely while still giving everyone a seat, but it had prompted some people to move around from their usual arrangements.

The theoretical component of the Navigation midterm they were taking today wasn’t worth as much as the practical in the sim lab he had scheduled for the end of the week, but it was still worth a lot. Farid needed to calm down so that he didn’t freak out and freeze up in a bout of test-anxiety. Farid eyed the pull-out desk on Jim’s seat. He flipped it into the upright position, and then leaned his left arm on it. If Jim was sitting somewhere else, Farid would at least make use of the extra elbow room.

◦◦◦

Chris tilted his PADD out of the glare from the sunlight. He glanced over his shoulder to the window overlooking the quad. It was such a nice day out, and here he was stuck at his desk in his office.

A quick rap on his open office door alerted him to Wendy leaning in on the doorframe.

“You look like you could use a break.”

“Yeah, well you know how it is. The students get a break after midterms, while all of us professors have to rush to grade the exams.”

It might not have been such a mind-numbingly boring task if he’d been teaching a class that allowed more open-ended short response and essay style questions. Chris always liked the small peaks into the minds of his students. They were such a creative, inquisitive bunch, it never ceased to amaze him at the endless possibilities they managed to come up with.

As it was, the current stack of tests in front of him contained logistics calculation questions for his command track students.

If you have a constitution class starship moving at warp 2.2 out of the beta quadrant with direction vector [-12.25, 6.7, 444], and your engines sustain damage bringing them down to fifty percent capacity and they will likely continue to have performance drop off on a logistic regression:  
a) How much time do you have to fix the problem until your crew is stranded?  
b) List the top three closest planets or starbases that could offer support in order of relevance.  
c) Which of your staff do you request additional information from, and in which order?  
d) Repeat (a-c) under the scenario that you release 30 tons of mass out of the cargo hold.

Questions of that effect ad nauseam. Chris almost felt bad for his students. He felt bad enough for himself just grading them. The questions weren’t well written, they were missing vital information, and that was exactly the point. Anyone in a command position had to be able to deal with uncertainty. Make decisions without knowing all the facts. The questions were just flexible enough that with the right assumptions adequately explained, there could be multiple correct answers. Chris couldn’t use an auto-grade system.

Wendy hummed in commiseration. “There’s a group of us going out for drinks tonight. You’re welcome to join and get away from those for a while.”

“That’s a little early, isn’t it?” Unlike the tenured professors, Chris was only on temporary placement awaiting the completion of the USS Enterprise, the fleet’s new flagship. But even he knew that the time honored tradition of getting drunk and sharing all the newest ways in which you had lost faith in the younger generations usually didn’t happen for another week at least.

“Yeah, but Carter is absolutely crowing about one of his students. Won’t shut up about it really. Everybody in the lounge has decided to call it a day.”

“Carter Vestra? Really? I always got the impression that guy cared more about his research than he did about his students.” Chris had actually talked a couple of his advisees out of taking the man’s classes after a few too many came to him with a failing grade that put their entire four-year plan in jeopardy.

“Yup, that Vestra.” Wendy grinned devilishly. “He’s saying the kid solved the bonus question at the end of the exam. First time anybody’s done it in his fifteen years teaching.”

“Well, somebody had to do it eventually, right?” Chris wasn’t that surprised. Some of his colleagues fixated on everything their students got wrong, but Chris liked to focus on all the things his students managed to accomplish instead.

Wendy’s eyes widened for a second, like a thought had just occurred to her. “Actually, I think Carter’s newest star pupil is one of your recruits. His name is Kirk. Jim Kirk.”

“George and Winona’s boy?” The Kelvin baby. That did actually manage to surprise Chris. It was a hard feat to surprise him. Office life was much more of a sure thing than the kinds of unexpected challenges he faced in deep space.

Chris wasn’t so sure he had done the recruiting. In fact, he was pretty positive he would have remembered if he’d recruited Kirk. Wendy must be mistaken.

“That’s right. You definitely need to come out with us, Chris. Just in case Carter’s good mood extends far enough that he decides to join. I need a buffer. He’ll talk everyone’s ears off about relative ion exchanges generating effects on the macro-motion of moons if we let him.”

“Maybe. I’ll think about it and come down if I decide to go. I did want to get through at least a few more of these.” Chris waved a hand over his desk.

“Ok. Well, you know where to find us. Faculty lounge on two.” Wendy nodded at him, then left.

His hand moved back to the PADD with the next test loaded up ready to grade. He hesitated. Chris was curious now. Too curious for his own good. He wouldn’t be able to get back to grading until he figured it out. Why did Wendy think Chris recruited Jim Kirk?

Chris had done his dissertation on the Kelvin. He’d never met George. He _had_ interviewed Winona about her late husband for his research into the final moments aboard the Kelvin. But other than that, Chris really had no more personal connection to the Kirks than anybody else at Starfleet who’d ever met George or Winona.

Chris tilted his head to the side. He didn’t usually participate in the trips to the high school assemblies or career fairs to make patriotic speeches and hand out promotional materials. That wasn’t his job. The likelihood that one particular recruit out of the thousands that signed up to enlist every year was one Chris had pulled in seemed astronomically low.

Just like all officers of a certain rank, Chris had the clout to pull strings for a handful of special cases every year. He kind of hated that the system worked in a way where a recommendation for a nephew or a neighbor’s kid would push paperwork faster than if they applied on their own.

If Chris were anybody else, he would have just ignored the double standards and looked the other way. He didn’t. He picked his own special cases. Young people with potential that had been dealt a few too many hard knocks in their life and deserved a second chance. It wasn’t _right_ using those same special privileges on a select few. It probably made him a hypocrite. But Chris thought it brought more balance to the game than if he had done nothing.

There was a chance. A very small chance that Wendy was right and Chris had recruited Kirk and he was going senile in his middle age.

Chris turned to the console and dug around in its memory files until he found his recruitment list for this year’s autumn semester. His eyes skipped down the list of names. No Kirk.

He went through the names again. Just to double check. After this he swore to himself that he’d be done with the mystery and get back to grading.

Chris’ eyes landed on a name. It wasn’t Kirk. It was McCoy.

Leonard McCoy.

_That_ recruitment had been memorable. Starfleet liked to call people like McCoy ‘alternative’ cadets. Since they didn’t get picked up through the usual channels or methods. These were people that were either older, had completed a degree, or were already established in another career.

Chris hadn’t even needed to find McCoy and pick him up out of a gutter or a jail cell like his usual special cases. In a way, McCoy had found Chris. He’d sent in the enlistment paperwork already completed through the network portal a week before the official cutoff deadline for the semester.

Usually cutting it that close wouldn’t have flown because of all the other hoops you had to jump through in order to enlist. But McCoy hadn’t needed to sit for aptitude tests at one of the Starfleet enlistment centers like most of the ‘traditional’ cadets because he had both an undergrad degree and a medical license.

He _did_ have to show up to the Academy campus on time for the beginning of the new semester. The official Starfleet recruitment shuttles were staggered over the few weeks before the start of the semester to allow for some processing time over in Administration. The shuttle leaving Georgia had already passed through a week and a half beforehand, so McCoy had the option of finding his own travel arrangements out to California or meeting up with another Starfleet shuttle headed to the Academy.

The nearest shuttle had been in Iowa. Where Chris had been overseeing some second-year cadets on an excursion to the Riverside shipyards.

Chris was the one who officially signed off on McCoy’s enlistment forms. The man may have been an accomplished doctor, but he’d looked out of sorts in the exact same kind of way that Chris’ special cases usually were. Drunk. Disenchanted. Disconnected. Lacking in the part of their life that made them want to wake up in the morning.

Chris had added McCoy’s name to his list of ‘special’ recruits. But when they got to the Academy, Chris had handed off McCoy’s file over to medical. Chris didn’t have the authority to advise someone in that discipline.

Sitting here now, he was curious. How was he doing? Was he adjusting to his life at Starfleet ok? McCoy was the only one of the names on this list he hadn’t checked in on personally. The reports coming in from medical had been superb so there’d been no reason to pry into the man’s privacy.

Chris was invested, though. He didn’t just want to hear good things about his students and advisees. He wanted to see the evidence for himself. It was another mystery he couldn’t let go without unraveling. Too curious for his own good, Chris sighed. At this rate, he’d never finish his grading.

Chris pulled up McCoy’s file.

It was pretty much what he expected. Glowing reviews from colleagues at medical. An excellent, if not stellar grade, on the first midterm that had grades submitted of the three he’d taken.

Chris’ eyes stopped on the one surprising thing on this file. The name James T. Kirk.

Two mysteries, one answer. Was it that easy?

Wendy thought Chris recruited Kirk because he’d recruited Kirk’s husband? It was probably more likely that Kirk, the Starfleet legacy, had enlisted and then convinced his husband to come along too. Maybe McCoy was one of those spouses who was sick and tired of sitting alone at home while their loved one went off into the unknown without them. It would certainly explain McCoy’s lackluster state in Iowa, and his last-minute decision.

Some gossip-monger over in Administration had probably seen Kirk’s name, McCoy’s name, and Chris’ name altogether on the paperwork, remembered Chris’ dissertation on the Kelvin, and then attributed Kirk as one of Chris’ recruits.

Almost amused, Chris clicked on the link to Kirk’s file. He’d just check the enlistment dates and overseeing officer to see who really recruited him. He should have started with Kirk’s file to begin with when Wendy brought it up. Why’d Chris automatically think he was going senile? He wasn’t _that_ old.

Chris’ whole body stopped moving once the file loaded. Mouth gaping, he had to swallow with how dry it started to go after how long he sat there staring at the official picture.

Those eyes.

Piercing blue. A young man at the start of his career with so much potential.

If someone had shown Chris this picture all those years ago and told him that this is what JT would look like in a decade, Chris would have believed them.

It was ridiculous. JT was not Jim Kirk. JT wanted nothing to do with Starfleet.

Chris was seeing things the way he wanted them to be, not the way they actually were. It was just like all those times in a crowd he’d see the back of a blond head, and Chris’ eyes would catch, his head would turn. The instinct to cry out ‘JT!’ burned on his tongue.

It was never JT.

Chris tried to calm down. No amount of rationalization stopped him from seeing blue eyes and blond hair and thinking JT though. He could remind himself how common the combination was until he was blue in the face and it wouldn’t matter.

Chris had to get a grip.

George Kirk was a blue-eyed blond haired man. Chris didn’t think _he_ was JT.

Chris had seen enough pictures of George Kirk in his life to be more than familiar with the lines of his face. Chris searched Jim Kirk’s face for the resemblance. The cut of his jaw. The shape of his brow. His laugh lines. They were all there.

Jim Kirk was not JT.

Chris didn’t get anymore grading done that night. He couldn’t have even if he’d tried to. He didn’t go out to get smashed with the other faculty. He went back to his one-bedroom Starfleet issue apartment and poured himself a drink. He wished he had a real photo of JT, so that his tears had something more substantial to cry over. The kid had disappeared without a trace.

Chris never got around to checking the enlistment status box, or the overseeing enlistment officer on Kirk’s file. In fact, Chris actively avoided clicking on Kirk’s file.

Those eyes. They haunted him.


	9. Chapter 9

It seemed like such a fucking low bar. The ability to know that when you went home there was someone there who actually gave a shit about you. Someone who would notice when you were absent. Someone who wasn’t there, even in part, out of obligation or for survival or a misguided sense of pity that made you feel like a pathetic useless charity case. Jim had never hit that bar before in his life. Not until Bones.

Jim had been living with Bones for months now, and he still wasn’t entirely convinced that the whole thing was real. That Bones could actually enjoy his company, that he wanted him there. It didn’t matter that Bones demonstrated his dedication to Jim in word and action every day. There was always the doubt that it would all just fall out from underneath him, and Jim would find Bones gone one day, the same way that Jim had tried to leave.

There were days when Jim waited in bed, pretending to sleep. Trying to slow his breathing enough that he could convince his body that he really was asleep. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what he would do if Bones just didn’t come back. He’d lie like that, body full of tension, sucking in low shallow breaths, with his eyes tightly shut so he didn’t have to see the shadowed empty room around him.

It would be hours until Bones got off his shift. Until at last, the front door clicking open would sound, muffled through the walls. And Jim would finally relax.

He would listen attentively to the sounds of Bones moving through the apartment. The man had a routine. He’d shuck his shoes, alarm the lock shut on the door with a beep. He’d wash up in the sink in the bathroom first, then he’d realize he’d forgotten a cup and pad back out to the kitchen to pour a glass of water from the kitchen sink. A minute or so of silence while Bones sat in the kitchen just relaxing with the glass after a long day.

Jim had a favorite part of the routine. It was when Bones opened the door to the bedroom. Always slow and deliberate to avoid any squeaks, as if considerate of how Jim was sleeping. He’d strip and come and lay down with Jim.

Bones would tuck the sheets in around the both of them. Then carefully, oh so carefully to not wake Jim, Bones would pull Jim nice and tight in his arms.

Being held by Bones was the best part of the day. Probably the best part of Jim’s decade.

◦◦◦

From his spot on the stand in the center of the room, Bones yelped. He managed to refrain from jumping. Sergio, the tailor, tsked in disapproval as his hands moved to replace the pin. Sergio may have been the one doling out pin-pricks here and there, but Bones was most certainly the one being prickly.

“If you would please hold still, we’re almost done here.” Sergio held another pin by his mouth, unimpressed.

Bones grumbled. “You said that when we came the last time.”

“And if you stopped working out, it might’ve been true.” Sergio squeezed the bicep on Bones’ right arm with one hand. “You’ve gained almost a quarter-inch through your shoulders. Now, I’m never going to tell a young man such as yourself to _not_ exercise. I’m certain your husband appreciates it.” Sergio winked at Jim, and Bones blushed at the insinuation.

Jim watched the interplay from the setteé in the corner of the room and tried not to be too obvious in his ogling of the tri-mirror setup behind the stand. If Jim had thought a well-fitted suit did wonders for his own ass, he had nothing on what it did for Bones’.

“But stick to cardio until the big day, hmm? We’re almost at the edge of the seam allowance that I can let out. It would be such a shame to have to give up on this one and slap together a rush job at the last minute.”

Bones spluttered. “I’m not- I’m just trying to meet the Academy requirements for physical conditioning.”

“Yes, of course you are. Keep telling yourself that.” Sergio tutted. Then he placed one last pin and said, “All done, you can take it off now.”

Bones started undressing.

Jim stood. “We’re finished?”

“If you want to take it home, pins and all, sure. Otherwise I’ll need about half an hour to finish up. You boys think you can find something to occupy yourselves with until then?”

Bones shrugged and then stepped out of his pants. “Gotta be something to do around here.”

◦◦◦

The road was closed. It was very obvious why. Some kind of street fair. Or farmer’s market. Or both. There were barricades blocking any vehicle traffic. Pop-up booths shielding their occupants and their occupants’ wares ran down along the sidewalk and into the street for as far as the eye could see. Which was only as far as the next couple blocks. But still, it was impressive.

Jim looked over at Bones beside him. “So, …” He said leadingly.

Bones looked at Jim, then he glanced at the sprawl of vendors, artists, food trucks and general hubbubery. He sighed. “Lead the way. Might as well when we’ve got time to kill.”

Jim stopped in at nearly every booth. Bones didn’t comment but watched critically as Jim handled the merchandise and spoke with the ambitious entrepreneurs. After a handful of stop-ins, they’d gleaned the lay of the land.

There were the artists: those selling more traditional wall-mounted pieces, the garden rock engravers, the independent clothiers that sold bright throw-back festival-wear.

Local civic organizations with raffles for vacation cruises gave away tickets in exchange for comm info to send meeting announcements and newsletters to. All in an effort to boost participation and engagement. ‘Spin the wheel for a chance to win a prize!’ declared the banner for the San Francisco Public Library.

The crowd was not evenly distributed. Every three or four displays a mass of people congregated.

“What are they lined up for, do you think?” Bones nodded at the crowd around a nearby booth.

“Free samples.” Jim pointed to the sign barely readable behind the cluster. He made his way closer, easily edging in behind someone who had just turned to leave. “Look, honey sticks!” Jim reached out for a sample.

Bones grabbed it out of his hand, turning the tube that the sign proclaimed as ‘cherry-flavored’ over and over. “Do you want to make your throat swell up? You don’t even know what’s in this!” There were no detailed ingredients labeled other than the name of the farm distributor printed on it.

The man working behind the counter turned his attention over to them at that. “All one-hundred percent bio-engineered bee product right there. Our strains are direct-mods from clones of the last pure bees of the late twenty-first century. Natural flavoring with none of the usual allergens. As long as you aren’t allergic to honey, you should be good.”

“See.” Jim took another honey stick. Sign said one per person, after all. He opened the end of the tube and squeezed some on his tongue. Smacking his lips together, he said, “Mm, we should get some.”

“They come in packs of twelve. You do not need that much sugar.”

Jim made a face.

Bones capitulated. “We won’t go home empty-handed. Promise.”

If nothing else, they’d certainly get enough free samples to avoid that fate.

The next booth over had an artist doing caricatures. “No.” Bones said before Jim even had a chance to suggest it. Jim would’ve protested, but the next booth over from the caricatures looked intriguing.

Jim walked up and took in the display of trinkets. Jewelry, cheap bits and bobs made from natural unpolished stones and glass beads. The semi-precious stones were in a rotating rack above. Jim spun it. Rose Quartz. Amethyst. Aquamarine. Topaz.

Jim glanced back at Bones, looking for a reaction, to share a joke. But Bones had already moved on another five meters to watch where a man was doing a live demonstration of carving a wood statue.

This jewelry, while not explicitly labeled for a particular gender, leant decidedly feminine in style. Thin chains. Delicate wire framings to set the stones.

Jim picked up a single dark blue Lapis Lazuli pendant. The stone wasn’t any bigger than his thumbnail. It was not the kind of thing he or Bones would wear. But Joanna, … 

Jim wanted to get her a present for the holidays.

Was that overstepping? Bones had balked at the idea of Jim throwing money at the custody situation. Was jewelry even appropriate for a six-year old? He didn’t have to give it to her this year. If he found something else he could always just hold onto this one until she was eleven or twelve and a preteen with all the accompanying need for declarations of identity based on outward signs of appearance.

Jim’s fingers squeezed over the rough surface of the uncut stone. It was a cheap little trinket. Hardly came close to being as expensive as a twelve-pack of those honey sticks.

Jim bought the necklace. He pocketed it. He turned to the wood carving booth, but he didn’t see Bones.

A moment shy of doing a full turnabout in the street, Jim spotted Bones. Heading towards him, with an oversized cup in his hands. He thrust it out towards Jim.

“Here.” All sides of the cup had zany yellow lemons printed on. “Since you didn’t get the honey.”

“Thanks.” Jim took a quick sip of the lemonade through the straw. Sweet. Tart. Refreshing. It probably had just as much sugar as the honey.

They kept walking.

Bones slowed outside of a booth selling hand-spun wool in skeins of various colors. Jim slowed in step with him. Bones didn’t make any moves to go examine the wares.

“Trying to decide if knitting goes well with your gym-rat persona? A hand-knit scarf will _really_ help you make those gains.” Jim teased. Bones glared at him and stepped up to the booth.

Bones picked up one ball of yarn, then another.

“Wait, are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Bones rummaged deeper in the bin.

“Just, knitting? Really?”

Bones stopped rummaging. He straightened his shoulders, still staring into the depths of the worsted weights. “I need something to occupy my hands with. To distract me. I need to stop drinking so much.”

“You don’t drink that much.” Jim said, because, sure, he’d come home to find Bones with a glass a few times. But it wasn’t _excessive_.

Bones looked at him dead-on, and he said in a quiet sure tone, “I don’t drink when you’re there.”

“Oh.”

If felt like Bones was telling him something with that. Like Bones was drinking not only when Jim wasn’t there. But also _because_ Jim wasn’t there.

Bones bought some yarn. He picked up a set of needles too.

Jim waited for him by the edge of the booth.

When Bones returned with his small bag of purchases in one hand, he used the other to grab hold of Jim’s hand.

“Don’t want you to get lost in the crowd.” Bones said, voice tight and gruff.

“Right.” Jim replied, no less affected.

They both knew that other than the small groupings of people around the free samples, there wasn’t really a crowd large enough to get lost in. Jim laced his fingers through Bones’ and squeezed.

◦◦◦

The huge reader screen above the doors was set to display a banner. It read: ‘Welcome Attendees of the 2255 Medical Innovation Society Annual Awards’ in a curling cursive font-type.

Jim and Leonard walked side-by-side up the wide stairs at the front of the building that raised it above street-level to lord pretentiously over the pedestrians. Leonard wasn’t sure what this building was usually used for, but it was right across from the art museum. It had the same pompous look about it: arrogantly large and modern enough to justify all the offshoots and sky bridges that were definitely there more for the architectural aesthetic than any actual utility.

This gala was meant to celebrate accomplishments throughout medicine in the previous year. Which didn’t make a lick of sense to Leonard.

Yes, the second paper for his neural grafting technique had finally been published this year in an academic journal after numerous draft cycles with the peer reviewers and editors.

But the first paper he’d published on the subject had been the _true_ innovation. And that paper had been published three years ago now as the culmination of work from the better part of this decade, not the last year. He hadn’t even performed the technique for almost eight months.

Half-way up the steps Leonard grabbed Jim’s right hand.

“I never should have gotten nominated.” Leonard said, as he glared at the banner.

Jim drew his brows together, surprised. “What? Why?”

“There were fifteen authors on the paper they’re recognizing me for. Fifteen!” Leonard spat. They approached the automatic sliding glass doors. Jim smoothed down the front of his suit with his free hand. “Do you see any of them getting invited to this shindig? No.”

They walked into the entry way, a long high-ceilinged lobby with crystal chandeliers and bronze-fixtured wall-sconces lighting the interior. Jim tugged him over towards the check-in table.

“The idea was yours. None of the flood of follow-up publications that came out in response would have existed without you. You practically invented a whole new field.” Jim protested as he scouted out the rows and rows of nametags sitting on the table. Finding theirs, Jim let go of Leonard’s hand to pick them up and started attaching his to the front of his suit.

“I just don’t like it.” Leonard crossed his arms. “I couldn’t have done it without any of the dozens of people who helped me. Not to mention all the patients willing to undergo a risky experimental treatment.” Leonard paused, swallowing. “Jesus, Jim, some of them _died_. But do we glorify them and their families for their sacrifice and contribution to science and medicine?”

Jim didn’t answer Leonard’s question. Instead he pinned Leonard’s nametag to the front of his suit.

Leonard continued ranting. “No. It’s the doctor in the corner office already making a pretty penny of a salary who needs even more accolades.”

Jim smoothed down the nametag on Leonard’s chest. He looked up and said intently, “Some of them died, and some of them _lived_. You did _good_ , Bones.”

Leonard bit down on his lip and looked out at the indulgence that this whole event radiated. “We should be celebrating the nurses, the hospital administrators, the pharmacists, the custodians. All those people who do good work every day. Awards like this, they just reek of a sense of ego-centric self-aggrandizement.”

“Can you just enjoy it? As a party. Please?” Jim pleaded.

Leonard looked at him. He thought about how little would actually change if he was in a bad mood for the rest of the night “Fine.” Leonard sighed, uncrossed his arms, and took Jim’s hand once again.

They walked through the interior lobby doors to the main ballroom. A stage had been set up with seating arranged around small circular tables throughout the room. At the rear of the room the catered hors d'oeuvres were laid out. A low rumble of background small-talk from the people scattered around echoed throughout.

Leonard made a beeline straight for the drinks. He picked up two glasses of champagne, handed one to Jim and immediately took a sip of his own.

Jim took it all in, expression contemplative. “Do you know any of these people?”

“Not really.” Leonard took another sip of his drink. Frowned in distaste. He wasn’t a fan of the bubbly, but he was definitely in favor of what the alcohol would do to his mood. “I’d probably recognize about half their names, but I don’t know any of their faces well enough to pick them out by sight.”

Jim took his first sip out of his own glass. “So there’s nobody who you really want to rub shoulders with?”

Ok, yes, there might’ve been a couple of people whose brains Leonard would love the opportunity to pick. But- “If we’re going to go schmoozing, let’s get some food first.” Drinking on an empty stomach would make him come off as a drunk to these people who were supposed to be his most esteemed colleagues in the field.

They headed over two tables to the food. Jim held two plates out, while Leonard piled them each with an assortment of bite-sized edible delicacies. Turning around to face the room once more, this time with a plate held defensively in front of him, Leonard noticed somebody he recognized.

There, coming through the doors to the lobby, were two men wearing the Starfleet dress uniform. Leonard smirked. He’d been right. They _did_ stick out like sore thumbs in this room full of people dressed to the nines.

“Hey, I think I know somebody after all.” Leonard nudged Jim and Jim followed his gaze. “That’s Captain Christopher Pike. And if I’m not mistaken he’s here with Dr. Phillip Boyce.”

Jim paled.

“I didn’t think Starfleet would be at this thing. Should’ve realized they’ve got their fingers in plenty of pies.” If there was any good place to start up with the small-talk, those two men would be it. “Probably should go say hello.” Leonard attempted to walk, but Jim clutched Leonard’s arm by the sleeve of his suit coat, halting any forward momentum. “Ok, now what is it? I thought you _wanted_ to go chit-chat.” He threw an arm in the direction of the officers across the room.

Jim shook his head, wordlessly. He swallowed. “It’s nothing.” He finally managed.

Leonard looked him up and down. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” Jim’s voice did not sound confident.

The moment that happened next would stick in Leonard’s memory for a long, long time to come. Jim reached out and grabbed a cracker smeared with salmon pâté off of Leonard’s plate. A plate that Leonard had purposefully piled with food separate from Jim’s on the basis of ingredients that he knew Jim could not eat.

Leonard didn’t react at first because he was pre-occupied with how _off_ Jim seemed. As if he’d dissociated and was operating on auto-pilot, just eating whatever bite of food in front of him looked the best.

“Wait!” Leonard said too late, uselessly reaching out, as Jim bit into the cracker and hardly chewed before swallowing.

From one second to the next, Jim’s plate went crashing to the floor, spraying food all over as it went. Jim hacked out a cough, clutching his throat in his hands, breath coming out in slow wheezes.

“Goddamnit.” Leonard could see the swelling happen right in front of him. Jim’s eyes started to water. The airway was blocking up. Leonard threw his own food down onto the mess. He started searching his pant pockets. He hadn’t brought his med-kit. This was supposed to be a party.

“Stay calm for me.” Leonard instructed. He patted down Jim’s sides. Surely, the reckless idiot who went ahead eating seafood he was allergic to had thought to bring an anti-allergen hypo.

The pants were so well fitted, Leonard would have known if there’d been anything in Jim’s pockets. He frisked up and down anyways.

They were starting to attract a crowd. Leonard pointed at one of their spectators. “You! Call an ambulance.” He shouted.

Jim dropped to his knees. His breaths were getting shorter and shorter.

Leonard took Jim’s face and angled it towards himself. “Jim. Jim, you’re going to be fine. I am going to make sure you’re ok. You hear me?” And by God, did Leonard want what he said to be true.

Ten seconds later Jim passed out. Sprawled across the floor, with horrified gawkers looking on. Fuck. They were in a room full of _doctors_ and none of them could even so much as _help_. Leonard sat cross-legged and tipped Jim’s head into his lap. All Leonard could do was sit and wait for the ambulance to arrive.

◦◦◦

A tang of sickly sweet pervaded in the air that was unmistakably familiar. Death disguised with aerosol de-odorizers. Filtered through the harsh tubing of the cannula in his nostrils.

Jim blinked his eyes open and stared at the ceiling. The gaps in the tiles were barely noticeable with their tightly designed construction. But they were there. Jim noticed them. Give him an hour and he could count the total tiles in this room.

He should be trying to summon more energy to be upset about this situation.

But the steady beeping heart-rate monitor reminded Jim that he wasn’t dead. That was something.

A calloused hand firmly gripped his own.

He shifted his weight from back to hips, preparing to sit up. The beeping increased pace with frenetic starts and jumps as his overtaxed body tried and failed to hold the motion.

The grip of the hand on his own tightened.

“Jim?” Bones’ voice. Sounding completely wrecked.

Jim managed to turn his head. “Hey Bones.” His own voice was hoarse. Indicative of intubation at some point. How long had he been out?

Jim tried for a smile. He lost the inclination once he got a good look at Bones. There was stubble on a jaw that had been clean-shaven. His eyes were blood-shot.

Bones didn’t respond. He stared at Jim like he was afraid this was the last chance he’d see Jim alive.

Jim wanted Bones to cuss him out. To call him names. To rant and rave about the unfairness of it all. About Jim’s reckless abandon knowingly eating shit he was allergic to.

Anything but this too serious moment.

Bones tightened his hold on Jim’s hand until the metacarpals all crushed together and Jim winced. Bones loosened his grip but didn’t let go. “Jesus.” Bones let out a shuddering breath.

“I’m sorry.” Jim rasped.

Bones murmured. “’s not you fault.” So quiet that Jim barely caught the self-recrimination evident in the undertone.

Yet, it _was_ his fault.

Maybe he’d simply been distracted and stalling, picking up whatever was in front of him to fill his mouth and keep him from saying anything about his relationship with Chris Pike.

Maybe he had always had an imbalanced, unhealthy relationship with his food. One where food was both comfort and torture. The implement of his suffering, the crutch by which he kept himself alive, the dearest key to his most treasured memories. And he’d eaten the smallest bit of comfort he could as a last ditch effort to steal himself for the coming confrontation. _Chris wasn’t supposed to be there_.

But the truth of it was that a part of him, some deep subconscious part of him, _knew_ exactly what was going to happen to him when he took that bite. He’d been running away. Like always.

Bones scooted the hard chair he sat in forward with a dull squeak against the tile floor.

He cupped both of his hands around Jim’s hand and raised it up. Bones’ eyes held Jim’s gaze as he kissed the back of Jim’s hand with such tenderness. A fleeting soft affection that was over again too soon.

Bones started dropping their palms. Jim didn’t let his hand drop. He forced his arm up another two, three inches and ran the back of his knuckles across Bones’ left cheekbone in a featherlight caress.

Bones’ eyelashes fluttered. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Jim.” It was ragged. Undone. An appellation and an exaltation. Beseeching. Seeking from Jim forgiveness and divine favor as though Jim was not only the center of Bones’ universe, but the almighty power whom which controlled the currents of life at a whim.

Maybe Jim was. Jim patted the bedside next to him with his free hand. “Lay down with me.”

And Bones. Lovely, caring, heart-of-gold behind a well-crafted surly exterior, Bones, acquiesced to Jim’s whims without a word of complaint about the too-small for two people bed or the scratchy sheets.

“I sleep better when you’re here.” Jim said when Bones’ comforting weight settled in next to him.

A warm breath of air against Jim’s neck. “Me too.”

◦◦◦

In the morning, Jim woke again alone on the biobed and Bones was back in the chair, slumped down, chin resting against his chest.

It hadn’t been a dream. The feel of Bones beside him had been too real. Bones probably just got in trouble with the nurses.

Jim’s hand went to his throat. The skin was bare beneath his fingertips.

No. No, no, no. Where was it?

“Bones!” Bones snorted awake.

Jim’s hands scrabbled up and down his chest in a panic, slipping beneath the loose paper gown he wore, and back up over the gown between it and the bedsheet. Did the chain break? It was supposed to make the ring _more_ secure, not less.

“What?” Bones was back to his usual just-woke-up cranky attitude. Cranky and _alert_ , after taking in Jim’s panic. He sat up. “What is it?”

Jim patted down the sides of the biobed, trying to get his fat fingers to fit down into the too-tight gap between the edge of the sheets and the side-braces.

“My ring! I can’t find it!”

Bones stood and approached the bed, hands held out placatingly. “Hey. Relax.”

“I can’t _relax_.” Jim almost didn’t recognize his own voice. It was so distraught.

“For fuck’s sake. I have it. It’s right here.” Bones picked up a clear vacuum-sealed storage bag off the top of the bedside table. “They took all your stuff when you were admitted. It’s standard procedure.”

“Oh, … right.” Jim stopped searching, fingertips digging hard into the sheets instead. He held onto his tension until he saw Bones pull the dangling chain out of the container.

“You want to wear it now?” Bones held out the glinting chain for Jim to take.

Jim watched the hypnotic sway of the ring and thought he wanted to be entranced by its magic forever. He wanted to wear it, but he didn’t just want to wear it. He wanted Bones to –

“Put it on me.” Jim dipped his head forward.

Bones stepped even closer. And then he stood there and stood there, longer. Jim tilted his head back up. Bones had tightened his grip on the chain, and his eyes were squeezed shut, his face a vision of pain.

“Bones?”

Bones let out a breath and opened his eyes. “What was that yesterday?”

“What?” Jim’s throat tightened in a way that had nothing to do with an allergic reaction.

“You know what I’m talking about.” Bones said, voice low, steady, and accusing. “You froze up. It was like you weren’t even there with me.”

Jim couldn’t make his voice work. Bones wasn’t going to give him back the ring.

“I know you know better than that. As much as I badger you about being more careful, every other time I’ve seen, you’ve _been_ careful. You could rattle off all your allergies in your sleep.”

Jim’s breath started coming out shallowly. The steady beep of the heart-rate monitor sped up. Jim stuck out his hand, fumbling badly to try and grab on to the chain.

Bones jerked it out of Jim’s reach.

“Bones.” Jim whined, and then he hiccupped. There was wetness on his cheeks.

“Tell me. Tell me if there’s something I need to worry about.”

Jim shook his head. He couldn’t. Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t he just have his ring back?

“Bones, please.” Jim cried.

Bones shook the fist holding the chain. “I can’t give this back to you unless you can promise me that won’t happen again. I can’t do this again.”

Jim was sobbing.

“Can you promise me?”

“Yes, I promise.” Jim lied. Nodding vigorously, in between panting gasps of air. “Bones, my ring!”

Bones’ expression broke like a sheet of ice. Bones looked at him, as if for the first time. “Oh, shit. Jim.”

Bones scrambled up onto the bed and rushed to push the chain over Jim’s head. It caught for a second over Jim’s left ear. Bones’ fingers brushed the cool metal around and down the shell of Jim’s ear leaving a wake of shivers on Jim’s skin.

Jim wept. He got a hold of the chain with his fingers, trying to ground himself, and felt only marginally more settled. He sniffled, sucking back in a wet glob of snot that escaped his nose.

Bones rocked him in his arms. “Shhh. Shh, darlin’. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Jim tucked his face into Bones’ neck. “It’s your ring, as long as you’ll wear it, it’s yours. I’m here for you. You know that right?”

Jim inhaled. More wet came out of his eyes.

“Bones.” Jim whispered. He hiccupped.

Bones ran his fingers through Jim’s hair. Scritching, petting. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bones.” Jim repeated.

“Shh, shh.” Bones took Jim’s face in his hands and kissed his forehead. “I need you to know that if you ever need help, I’m there. Anything you ever want to tell me, I’ll listen.”

“Bones.” Jim chanted, lulled.

Jim was wrong, he wasn’t the deity. That role was obviously reserved for Bones.


End file.
